LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Slpji.tS - injujrigi^t !f a.. 

Shelf. .-.Ei^X'T 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



An Irish Crazy-Quilt. 



SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO 
SONG AND STORY. 




t.<- 



BY 



ARTHUR M. KORRKSXKR. 



BOSTON : 

.ALFRED MUDGE & SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET. 

1891. 



75 \^1^^ 



Copyright, 

1890, 

By ARTHUK M. FORRESTER. 



TO THE 

"FELONS" OF IRELAND, 

THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW, 

Who have been Exiled or Imprisoned or Executed 

Because they Loved their Native Land more than 
Home or Liberty or Life, 

^hm Wohxmt 

IS DEDICATICD BY THE AUTHOR. 



COJSrTEE"TS. 



SONGS AND BALLADS. 



The Church of Ballymore 
TheOldBoreen . . . 
Tlie Irish Schoolhouse . 
Pat Murphy's Cows . . 
Father Tom Malone . . 
You Can Guess . . . 

Only! 

Songs of Innisfail . . 
The Lord of Kenmare . 
An Old Irish Tune . . 
Harvey Duff .... 
Ivan Petrokoffsky . . 
The Emperor's Ring 

Black Loris 

The Bed Heart Daisy . 
The Tide is Turning . . 
Our Own Again . . . 
The Tale of a Tail . . 
The Seasick Sub-Commis 

sioners 

Clare Constabulary Caione 
Clause Twenty-six . . 

Jenkins, M. P 

Thady Malone .... 
Rory's Reverie .... 
Our Land Shall be Free 
The Felons of Our Land 
An Official Valuation . 
A Bewildered Boycotter 
A Complaint of Coercion 
O'Neil's Address (Benburb) 
The Fenian's Dream . . 
The Speaker's Complaint 



AGE. 

7 
9 
11 
13 
16 
18 
19 
20 
32 
39 
45 
52 
54 
56 
67 
68 
70 
71 

75 

77 

78 

80 

81 

83 

102 

111 

112 

113 

115 

118 

119 

126 



Page. 

ErinMachree 128 

Balfour's Wish 135 

Our Cause 136 

Served Him Right .... 138 

Rapparee Song 140 

To the Landlords of Irchuid . 141 

Balfour Rejoices 142 

The Irish Brigade .... 149 
Faithful to the Last .... 156 
Fenian Battle Song .... 158 
The Grave of the Martyrs . . 159 
Death's Victory . . . . . 160 
The Green Flag at Fredericks- 
burg 161 

The Flag of Our Land ... 162 

Hurrah for Liberty .... 163 

The Messenger 165 

John Bull's Appeal .... 175 

The Story of a Bomb ... 177 

Avenging, Though Dim . . 180 
Christmas Dirge of London 

Police 180 

Ireland's Prayer 182 

John Bull's New Year . . . 183 

Ready and Steady 185 * 

The Charge of the Guards . 193 

An Address to Slaves . . . 195 

The Lion's Lamentation . . 200 

Memorial Ode to Irish Dead . 202 

Song of King Alcohol ... 209 

Contrary Cognomens . . . 210 

An Esthetic Wooing . . . 211 

The Drunkard's Dream . . 212 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Constable X 222 

Lucifer's Laborator}- .... 223 
The Monopolist's Moan . . 224 
With the Grand Army Vet- 
erans 225 

The Irish Soldier at Grant's 

Grave 228 

Maine and Mayo 229 

The Priest with the Brogue . 2;38 

Arab War Song . . . . . 240 



Page. 

The Linguist of the Liff ey . 247 

Peggy O'Shea 250 

The Boston Carrier's Plaint . 253 

New England's Marksmen . 2(50 

Calcraft and Price .... 270 

Entitled to a Eaise .... 272 

Tlie Postman's Wooing . . 273 

Sonnets to a Shoemat:er . . 275 

At the College Sports . . . 278 

Mulrooney: A Trooper's Tale, 286 



STORIES AND SKETCHES. 



Taming a Tiger 22 

Ryan's Revenge 34 

Harvey Duff 40 

A Seditious Slide 47 

Who Shot Phlynn's Hat? . . .58 

A Double Surprise .... 86 

Philipson's Party 103 

That Traitor Timmins ... 129 

A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner, 144 

Snooks 151 

Caledonian Candlesticks . . 152 

A Typical Trial 168 

Why Smithers Resigned . . 186 

Exploits of an Irish Reporter, 197 



A Political Lesson Spoiled 
An Orange Oration . . 
Frederick's Folly . . . 
A Sandy Row Skirmish 
Hobbies in Our Block . 
Not a John L. Sullivan 
A Windy Day at Cabra 
Apropos of the Census . 
A Mixed Antiquarian . 
Jones's Umbrella ... 
Lessons in the French Drai 
A Commercial Crisis 
A Musical Revenge . , 
A Liar Laid Out . . . 



205 
215 
232 
241 
244 
248 
256 
261 
2(33 
265 
276 
280 
282 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE. 

I HAVE knelt in great cathedrals with their won- 
drous naves and aisles, 
Whose fairy arches blend and interlace, 
Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory 
smiles, 
And the shadows seem to sanctify the place ; 
Where the organ's tones, like echoes of an angel's 
trumpet roll. 
Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven's 
shore — 
They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch 
my soul 
Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore. 

Ah ! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees, 

Though the roof above its worshippers was low, 
And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congrega- 
tion's knees. 
While they themselves were bent with toil and woe ! 
Milan, Cologne, St. Peter's — by the feet of monarchs 
trod — 
With their monumental genius and their lore, 



8 ^ AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers 
to God 
Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore ! 

Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide 
his brogue 
In accents that we might not understand, 
But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue 

As to think his words not heaven's own command! 
He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to 
divide, 
And he never passed the poorest peasant's door — 
In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our 
side — 
God be with you. Father Tom, of Ballymore. 

There 's a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at 
night I see 
Each little modest slal) and grassy mound ; 
For my gentle mother 's sleeping 'neath the withered 
rowan tree, 
And a host of kindly neighbors lie around ! 
The famine and the fever through our stricken country 
spread, 
Desolation was about me, sad and sore. 
So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek 
my bread, 
But I left my heart behind in Ballymore ! 

I am proud of our cathedrals — they are emblems of 
our love 
To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown ; 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 9 

And when wealth and art and beauty have been given 
from above, 
The devil should not have them as his own ! 
Their splendor has inspired me — but amidst it all I 
prayed 
God to grant me, when life's weary work is o'er, 
Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing 
shade 
Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore ! 



THE OLD BOREEN. 



EMBROIDERED with shamrocks and spangled 
with daisies, 
Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way, 
The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes, 

The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray ; 
The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it. 

The sun's golden rays bathed its bosom of green. 
Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes. 
For I opened them first on an Irish boreen ! 

It flung o'er my boyhood its beauty and gladness, 

Rich homage of perfume and color it paid ; 
It laughed with my joy — in my moments of sadness 

What solace I found in its pitying shade. 
When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture, 

My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen, 
What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace. 

So sweet as I quafled in the dear old boreen ? 



10 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded, 
Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant's 
toil, 
Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded, 

The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil ; 
Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly, 
Aimed straight at our hearts with a " death sentence " 
keen ; 
The blast spared our sheeting, which he, more un- 
feeling. 
Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen. 

A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing, 

The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf Avith a sigh, 
As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling, 

I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by ; 
And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor 

The grains of success from life's harvest-field glean, 
Where'er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me. 

My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen. 

Ah ! Fate has been cruel, in toil's endless duel 

With sickness and want I have earned only scars ; 
Life's twilight is nearing — its day disappearing — 

My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars ; 
But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision. 

Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through 
the scene 
Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood. 

The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen ! 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 11 



AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE. 

UPON the rugged ladder rungs — whose pinnacle 
is Fame — 
How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard's 

name ; 
The gates of glory Cambridge men o'er all the world 

assail, 
And rulers in the realm of thought look back with 

pride to Yale. 
To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise 
Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise ; 
Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will, 
The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay 

behind the hill. 

When in the balmy morning, racing down the green 

boreen 
Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were 

seen. 
We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for 

shoeless feet, 
But bubbled o'er with laughter dear old master's smile 

to meet ; 
Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring 

store 
Of learning's fearful mysteries and academic lore. 
No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill 
In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay 

behind the hill. 



12 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Perhaps — and yet 'tis hard to think — our boastful 

modern school 
Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and 

his rule ; 
AVould scorn his simple ways — and in the rapid march 

of mind 
His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, ftir 

behind. 
No matter ; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then ; 
He taught us how to face life's fight with all the grit 

of men ; 
To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill 
Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill. 

He taught us, too, of Ireland's past ; her glories and 

her wrongs — 
Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs : 
We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor 

flung 
Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung. 
In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well 
That some pursued the study in the English piison cell, 
And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still 
All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill. 

The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy 

gusts to-day ; 
Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, 

play; 
The hush of desolation broods o'er all the country-side ; 
The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and 

wide. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILI^ 13 

But wlieresoe'er one scholar on the face of earth may 

roam, 
When in a gush of tears comes ])ack the memory of 

home, 
He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy's magic 
' skill, 

The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay 

behind the hill. 



PAT MURPHY'S COWS. 

[In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary 
Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to 
the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited 
roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat Mur- 
phy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less 
than eleven children. ] 

IN a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner 
flows. 
There 's a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy 

ploughs and sows ; 
From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews 

strong. 
With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song. 
He's a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for 

corn, 
And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn ; 
While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and 

healthy, browse 
Pat's mine of wealth, his fortune sole — a pair of Kerry 

cows. 



14 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever 

lose 
The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young 

Murphy s shoes, 
Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt 

upon the bed, 
And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters over- 
head. 
And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely 

spent, 
For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with 

the rent ; 
In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can 

arouse ; 
He don't mind eleven young Murphys while he 's got 
that pair of cows. 

And when the day is over, and the cows are in the 

byre, 
Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen hy the fire ; 
His children swarm around him, and they hang about 

his chair — 
The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers 

in his hair, 
Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to 

rest. 
Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the 

chest ; 
And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters 

vows 
Ere that eleven should be ten he 'd sell the pair of cows. 



AN miSH CRAZY-QUILT. 15 

Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures 

out. 
How they cluster all around him there with joyous 

laugh and shout ! 
A kiss for one, a kiss for all, 'tis quite a morning's 

task, 
And the twins demand an extra share, and must have 

what they ask. 
What if a gloomy thought his spirit's brightness should 

obscure, 
As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, 

slow but sure, 
He 's hardly o'er the threshold when the shadow leaves 

his brow, 
For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine 

cow. 

Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with 
a groan — 

He had n't got the decency to leave those cows alone ; 

He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer. 

And made Pat Murphy's little ones the subject of a 
jeer. 

Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves 
who make their laws, 

And when the people laugh 't is for a somewhat better 
cause : 

They hate the whining coward who beneath life's bur- 
den bows. 

But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of 
Kerry cows. 



16 AN IRISH ORAZ^-QtjILT. 

FATHER TOM MALONE. 

A LAKD LEAGUE REMINISCENCE. 

HAIR white as innocence, that crowned 
A gentle face which never frowned ; 
Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress ; 
Lips framed to counsel and to bless ; 
Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes, 
A reflex of our native skies, 
Through which now tears, now sunshine shone 
. There you have Father Tom Malone. 

He bade the infant at its birth 
Cead mille failthe to the earth ; 
With friendly hand he guided youth 
Along the thorny track of truth ; 
The dying felt, yet knew not why, 
Nearer to Heaven when he was by — 
For, sure, the angels at God's throne 
Were friends of Father Tom Malone. 

For us, poor simple sons of toil 
Who wrestled with a stubborn soil, 
Our one ambition, sole content, 
Not to be backward with the rent ; 
Our one absorbing, constant fear, 
The agent's visits twice a year ; 
We had, our hardships to atone. 
The love of Father Tom Malone. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUiLT. 17 

One season failed. The dull earth slept. 
Despite of ceaseless vigil kept 
For sign of crop, day after day, 
To coax it from the sullen clay. 
Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came ; 
The tubers rotted — then, oh, shame ! 
We — 't was the last time ever known — 
Lost faith in Father Tom Malone. 

We had, from fruitful years before, 

Garnered with care a frugal store ; 

'T would pay one gale, but when 'twas gone 

What were our babes to live upon? 

We had no seed for coming spring. 

Nor faintest hope to which to cling ; 

We would have starved without a moan, 

When out spoke Father Tom Malone. 

His voice, so flute-like in the past. 
Now thrilled us like a bugle blast. 
His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze. 
Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze ! 
" God's wondrous love doth not intend 
Hundreds to starve that one may spend ; 
Pay ye no rent, but hold your own." 
That from mild Father Tom Malone. 

And when the landlord with a force 
Of English soldiers, foot and horse. 
Came down and direst vengeance swore, 
Who met him at the cabin door? 



18 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Who reasoned first and then defied 
The thief in all his power and pride? 
Who won the poor man's fight alone ? 
Why, fearless Father Tom Malone. 

So, when you point to heroes' scars, 
And boast their prowess in the wars, 
Give one small meed of praise, at least, 
To this poor modest Irish priest. 
No laurel wreath was twined for him, 
But pulses throb and eyelids dim 
When toil-worn peasants pray, " Mavrone, 
God bless you, Father Tom Malone !" 



YOU CAN GUESS. 



THEUE are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kil- 
dare, 
And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare, 
And in fairy Killarney 'tis easy to find 
Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind ; 
But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle, 
Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile, 
There 's one boreen I love, for 'twas there I confess 
I first met my fate, — what it was you can guess. 

It was under the shade of its bordering trees, 
One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees 
At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task. 
And yet it was but a short question to ask. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 19 

'T was over, and since, night and morning, I bless 
Tlie boreen that heard the soft whisper of " yes." 
And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress •, 
And the question was this — but I 'm sure you can 
guess. 



ONLY! 

ONLY a cabin, thatched and gray, 
Only a rose-twined door. 
Only a barefooted child at play 

On only an earthern floor. 
Only a little brain — not wise 

For even a head so small, 
And that is the reason he bitterly cries 
For leaving his home — that's all. 

Only the thought of her girlhood there, 

And her happier days as wife, 
In the shelter poor of its walls so bare, 

Have endeared them to her for life ; 
What is the weeping woman's cause ? 

Why are her accents gall ? 
What does she know of our intricate laws ? 

It was only a hut — that 's all. 

He's only a peasant in blood and birth. 

That man with the eyelids dim, 
And there 's room enough on the wide, wide earth 

For sinewy serfs like him. 



20 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Why had this pitiful, narrow farm, 
For his heart such a wondrous thrall ^ 

IVhy each tree and flower such a mystic charm ? 
He was born in the place — that's all. 



The years have gone, and the worn-out pair 

Sleep under the stranger's clay. 
And the weeping child with the curly hair 

Is a brave, strong man to-day ; 
Yet still he thinks of the olden land. 

And prays for her tyrant's fall, 
And longs to be one of some chosen band. 

With only a chance — that 's all. 



SONGS OF INNISFAIL. 

WHERE the Austral river rushes 
Through feathery heath and bushes. 
Through its gurgles and its gushes 

You may hear. 
To your wonder and surprise. 
Sweet melodies arise 
You have heard 'neath other skies 

Low and clear. 
Yes ! within the gold land. 
Strange to you and cold land, 
Voices from the old land 

Swell upon the gale — 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 21 

Lyrics of the story, 
Lit with flames of glory, 
Dimmed with pages gory, 
Songs of Innisfail ! 



Where Mississippi leaping 

O'er clifls and crags, or creeping 

Through valleys fair, is sweeping 

To the sea, 
From the fields of nodding grain 
On some mountain path or plain 
Rinsfs a stirrins^ old refrain 

Fresh and free. 
Yes ! where'er we wander 
Irish hearts will ponder 
O'er our land, and fonder 

Throb with ev'ry tale 
Of the home that bore us, 
Till the new skies o'er us 
Echo with our chorus 

Songs of Linisfail. 



Exiles o'er the spray-foam, 
Whereso'er we may roam. 
Thoughts of far-away home 

Linger still. 
And in dreams we see again 
Babbling stream and silent glen, 
Forest green and lonely fen. 

Vale and hill. 



22 AN HUSH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Yes ! our hearts' devotion 
Flies across the ocean, 
While with deep emotion 

Sternest features pale, 
As around us stealing, 
Softened by sad feeling. 
Through the air are pealing 

Songs of Innisfail ! 



TAMING A TIGER. 

WE were standing together on the platform of the 
King's Bridge terminus, Dublin, — five of us 
— a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers. 
There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as 
befitted the representative of a vast dry-goods estab- 
lishment whose business lay amongst modistes and 
milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified, who 
travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke & 
Brassey ; TimMalone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, 
the agent of a flourishing stationery house ; dashing 
Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a distillery, and 
rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and com- 
ical jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mis- 
chief as a frolicsome kitten ; and lastly, myself. We 
were waiting for the 11.30 a. m. train south, and in- 
dulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the 
appearance of various personages in the surrounding 
crowd, when our attention was attracted by the bus- 
tling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid indi- 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



23 



vidual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the 
generally irascible and angry air of an infuriated 
rooster. 

" Know that fellow ? " queried Burke. " That's Major 
Boomerang, the newly-appointed Resident Magistrate 
for some part of Cork ; all the way from Bengal, to 
teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks 
we're all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ^jumping 
Harry,' as he would ejaculate, he's going to sit on us. 
What do you say, boys, if we have a little lark with 
him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw 
him out. I'll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend 
Captain Neville, of the Galway militia. I won't know 
you other fellows, but you can take whatever charac- 
ters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me 
see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, 
Malone, at Limerick Junction. Jack Hickey goes on 
with us to Mallow. Now, I know this Boomerang will 
be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and 
Biggar and all the rest before we 're aboard ten min- 
utes^, and I want each of you fellows to take the role 
of whoever he pitches into the worst, and challenge 
him in that character. D'ye see? F., as Capt. 
Neville, will ofl'er to do the amiable for the major, and 
persuade him that he must fight. He 's an awful fire- 
eater in conversation, but I'll stake my sample case 
we '11 put him into the bluest of funks before we part. 
What do you say, boys?" 

Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer 
refusing to take a hand in any deviltry afoot that prom- 
ised a laugh at the end? We watched the major into 



24 AN miSH CRAZY-QUILT. 

a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He 
seemed rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we 
just crovvded the compartment, but he graciously recoo-- 
nized Burke, who had stayed in Dublin at the same 
hotel, and he was "delighted, sir, by the jumping 
Harry, — delighted to meet a brother officer " (that was 
your humble servant) . 

At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish mat- 
ters. He told us all manner of thrilling stories of 
his Indian adventures. He had polished ofi* a few 
hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed 
them to the trunks of trees with the native spear, 
riddled them with buckshot, swan-shot and bullets, 
and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had pegged 
out, and a Eoyal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from 
his snout to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to 
spring on poor Joe Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out 
a loose double tooth, rammed it home, and sent it 
crashing through the brute's frontal ossicles. 

He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, 
by the jumping Harry ! the Maharajah of Jubbulpore 
would take no denial, and that tooth is now the bright- 
est jewel in the dusky prince's coronet. 

He had killed a panther with his naked hands 

with one naked hand, in fact. It had leaped upon him 
with its mouth wide open, and in desperation he had 
thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its 
tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum 
of the panther's spring and his own thrust, that his arm 
went in up to the shoulder, and he found his strong 
right hand groping around the beast's interior recesses^ 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 25 

He tore its heart out, sir, — its heart, — and an assort- 
ment of lungs and ribs and other things. 

He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly 
cobra-di-capello crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor 
playfully entwining around his waist, than he did of 
taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He 
never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, 
not he. 

At last, as we were passing through the pleasant 
pasturage of Kildare, and rapidly nearing Portarlington, 
where we should part with Ryan, we managed to turn 
the conversation upon the unsettled state of aftairs in 
Ireland. 

"Ah !" said the blusterous Boomerano- "I'm o:oinir 
to change all that — down in Cork, anyhow. I'll have 
the murderous scoundrels like mice in a fortnight. By 
the jumping Harry, I'll settle 'em! I've quelled 
twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny 
rascals to pulverized atoms in Bengal, and if I don't 
make these marauding peasants here sing dumb, my 
name 's not Boomerang — Joe Boomerang, the terror of 
Janpore." 

"I don't," observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, 
" I don't blame the peasantry so much as those who 
are leading them astray. There 's Davitt, for instance." 

" I wish," growled the major, " that I had that rap- 
scallion within reach of my horsewhip, sir, for five 
minutes. I'd flay him, — flay him alive, sir. If he 
ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he '11 
remember Joe Boomerang — fighting Joe — as long 
as he lives. Green snakes and wild elephants ! I 



2(5 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned 
thief, the — the — by the jumping Harry, sir, I Avould 
exterminate the wretch ! " 

Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its 
uttermost dimensions, and leaning over to the astounded 
major, in a deep base thundered, "I am the man, Major 
Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your 
abominaljle bombast in silent contempt as long as I was 
not personally concerned. Now that you have attacked 
me, I demand satisfaction. I suppose your friend, 
Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will 
oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon 
you to-morrow. As an officer, even though no gentle- 
man, you cannot disgrace the uniform you have worn, 
Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day." 

We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped 
lightly on to the platform and disappeared, leaving the 
major puffing and blowing and gasping like an ex- 
hausted porpoise. "By the jumping Harry!" he at 
last exclaimed, but his voice had changed from its 
bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, " I cannot fight 
a convicted thief. I won't ! D me, if I will ! " 

"I beg your pardon, major," I observed. "You are 
mistaken ; Davitt is not a thief. He was merely a 
political prisoner. You can meet him with perfect 
propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the prelimi- 
naries for you. I expect he '11 choose pistols. Let me 
see, Burke, w^as n't it with pistols he met poor Col. 
Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him in 
the left groin. Don't you remember what a job they 
had extracting^ the bullet? People said, you know, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 27 

that it was the doctors and not Davitt that killed him." 
Burke assented with a nod. 

The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewil- 
dered look, like a man in a dream. " Good God ! " he 
murmured at last ; " has he killed a man already ? Why 
did n't they arrest him? Why did n't they hang him? 
I'm not going to be killed — I mean to kill a man that 
should be hanged. I 'm not going to be popped at l)y 
a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as if they 
were snipe." 

"But, my dear major," I remonstrated, "you must 
uphold the traditions of the cloth. In fact, the govern- 
ment will expect you to act just as Smith did." (The 
major groaned.) " Smith did n't like the idea of meet- 
ing Davitt, he's such a dead shot." (The major's 
visage became positively blue.) "But the Duke of 
Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for the 
honor of the service." 

" The service be d d ! " exploded the major, over 

whose countenance a kaleidoscope of colors — red, pur- 
ple, blue, yellow, and white — were flashing and fluc- 
tuating ; " I shall not fight a common low fellow like 
this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, 
it would be a different matter. By the jumping Harry, 
sir I " he cried, as he felt his courage returning at the 
prospect of evading the encounter, " if, instead of that 
low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament 
had ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I 
should have sprung, sir, sprung hilariously at the 
chance. But there is n't a man among them that 
wouldn't quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a light- 



28 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

ning glance from fighting Joe, who has looked the 
Bengal tiger in the eyes and winked at the treacherous 
crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir ! Biggar and 
O'Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing- 
Boomerang was round ; and as for that whipper-snap- 
per Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb from limb, 
without exerting my mighty muscles." 

Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electri- 
fied bantam-cock, and shaking his fist right under the 
major's nose, he hissed: "You are a cur; an unmiti- 
gated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am 
Healy. I '11 have your life's gore for this, if you escape 
my friend Davitt. I shall request him as a favor only 
to chip off one of your ears, so that I may have the 
pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as 
you must act for your brother officer, I shall send a 
friend to you to-morrow.'^ He sat down, and a solemn 
silence fell upon the company. The prismatic changes 
of hue which had illuminated the major's features had 
disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sicken- 
ing w^hitey-yellow. Not a word was spoken until we 
reached Limerick Junction, where Malone got off. 
The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and 
managed to whisper to me, "Can Healy fight?" 

"He is a master of fence," I replied. "I suppose, 
as the insulted party, he will demand choice of weapons. 
His weapon is the sword ; at least, he has always chosen 
that so far." 

" Has he been out before ? " asked the terrible tiger- 
slayer, in such horror-stricken accents that I could 
barely refrain from laughing outright. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. ^9 

*' Oh, yes," I replied carelessly, " five or six times." 

" Has he — has he — I 'm not afraid, you know — 
ha ! ha ! Joe Boomerang afraid — capital joke — but 
— but — has he killed anybody ? " 

" Only poor Lieutenant Jones," I answered. "You 
see Jones insulted him personally ; his other duels 
originated in political, not personal, matters. I think," 
I added maliciously, "he'll try to kill you." The 
major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his 
windpipe. I continued : " I would advise you to fur- 
bish up your knowledge of both pistol and sword prac- 
tice. You'll have to fight both Davitt and Healy. 
You '11 be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either 
challenge. It will be somewhat inconvenient for me to 
see you through both affairs, but, my dear fellow, I 
never allow personal inconvenience to interfere with 
my duty." 

"You're very good," he murmured ; "but don't you 
think that — that — " 

"That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, 
but let us hope for the best. I know an undertaker in 
Cork — a decent sort of a chap. We can arrange for 
the funeral with him, so that, if it don't come off the 
first time, he won't charge anything extra for waiting 
till Healy kills you." 

"Stop, stop," screamed the agonized panther pulver- 
izer. " You make me sick." By this time he had 
become green, and, as I did not know what alarming 
combination of colors he might next assume if I con- 
tinued, I remained silent for some time. As we were 
Hearing Mallow the major managed to get hold of 



30 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

enough of his voice to inquire how it came to pass that 
the government permitted such a barbarous practice as 
duelling. 

"Well," I responded, "it's a re-importation from 
America. Western institutions are getting quite a 
hold here. Duelling is winked at in deference to Yan- 
kee ideas." 

" Curse America and the Yankees too," roared Boom- 
erang. "Only for them we would have peace and quiet. 
They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang of — " 

"Yahoop!" There was a yell from Jack Hickey 
that shook the roof of the car, as that mdividual 
bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife clutched 
in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish 
determination on his features that made the mighty 
Indian hunter collapse and curl up in his corner like a 
lame hen in a heavy shower. " Where 's the double- 
distilled essence of the son of a cross-ej^ed galoot that 
opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about 
our great and glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and 
everlasting republic of America? I'm Yankee, clean 
grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to the back- 
bone, and he'sriz my dander. And when my dander's 
riz, I'm bound to have scalps. I'm a roaring, ring- 
tailed roysterer from the Rocky Mountains, I am ; 
half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I squeal, 
somebody 's got to creep into a hole ! Yahoop ! Let 
me at the blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. 
I don't wait for any ceremonies, sending seconds and 
all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a Kan- 
sas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the snub- 



AN IRTSH CRAZY-QUILT. 31 

nosed, curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher 
that wakes my larid fury. Look out, Boomerang. 
Draw yer knife, for here 's a double-clawed hyena from 
Colorado going to skiver you." And Jack made a ter- 
rific plunge forward, while he flashed his knife in a 
hundred wild gyrations that seemed to light up the 
compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made 
a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad 
Yankee and his victim, but it was unnecessary. The 
hero of Bengal had fainted. 

When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the por- 
ters a shilling, told him that a passenger was ill in a 
compartment which I pointed out, and, having given 
him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed 
staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang 
when he recovered that Captain Neville would wait 
upon him in the morning to arrange for his interview 
with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I 
called at the depot to see after my luggage, I ques- 
tioned the porter as to Boomerang, and asked had he 
gone on to his hotel. 

" Lor bless you, no, sir," said the railway official. 
"As soon as that gintleman kem to, he jist axed what 
time the first thrain wint on to Cork in the mornin', an' 
thin, whin I towld about you wantin' to see him this 
evenin', he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin', 
but he booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain 
that was goin' there an' thin. I will say I niver saw 
such a frightened lookin' gintleman since the day 
Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen's ghost, that 
hanged herself at the ould cross roads." 



B2 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

A few days after I read this announcement in the 
Dublin Gazette: " In consequence of ill-health, superin- 
duced by the humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major 
Boomerang has resigned the resident magistracy in 
Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will 
shortly return to Bengal." 



THE LORD OF KENMARE. 

THERE are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the 
valley ; 
The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves, 
When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions 't will 
rally, 
Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean's sad waves. 
What hosts of accusers will cluster around him. 

What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair, 
On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound 
him, 
That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare ! 

Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morn- 
ing 

The bountiful prizes of Nature to win, 
While he, wild and lustful, God's providence scorning, 

Used virtue's reward as the guerdon of sin. 
Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow 

Distemper and rot ; plagued the soil and the air ; 
Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in 
shadow. 

But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare ! 



AN Irish crazy-quilt. 33 

When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty ; 

When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours, 
For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the 
county 

Were — the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the 
flowers. 
And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling, 

Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare. 
The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling, 

Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare. 

Our fortune enriched him : he coined our disaster — 

This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds. 
Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master — 

A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds ! 
He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges ; 

He laughed at the shriek, and he scofled at the 
prayer 
That Kerry's green swards and Atlantic's white surges 

Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, 'gainst the 
Lord of Kenmare ! 

He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel, 

Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game, 
But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil 

Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name. 
Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason, 

The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare. 
And no longer the wolf-cry of " danger " and " treason " 

Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Ken- 
mare. 



34 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUlLf. . 

Hope's phosphorent rays light that desolate valley ; 

Truth's sunbeams illumine those derelict graves ; 
The stern blast of Justice's bugle will rally 

Avengers for every corpse 'neath the waves. 
Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury, 

Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare, 
Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury, 

The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Ken- 
mare ! 



RYAN'S REVENGE. 

DURING the height of the land agitation in Ireland, 
some of the most exciting debates in the House 
of Commons, and some of the most vehement articles 
in the National press, had reference to the action of the 
post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to 
gentlemen (and, for that matter, to ladies, too) whom 
the sagacious police intellect " reasonably suspected " 
of connection with the obnoxious league. This pecul- 
iarly English method of circumventing the plans of a 
constitutional association by a resort to an unconstitu- 
tional and illegal act was popularly known as " Graham- 
izing," from the fact that it had first been introduced by 
Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs 
certain refugees in London entertained against the Em- 
peror of the French, Napoleon HI. Inquisitive Graham 
had to resign his office, and the government which sanc- 
tioned his conduct was also kicked out by the indignant 
English electors, who are the soul of honor in all ques- 
tions that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the 
fate of Graham, subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to 



AN IRISH cra/.y-quilt. 35 

adopt his invention when they had reason to believe 
that anything calculated to interfere with the status quo 
was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Har- 
court, English Home Secretary in 1882, especially dis- 
tinguished himself by his reckless indulgence in this 
espionage of the letter-box. His post-office pilferings at 
last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that 
nearly swamped the staflf employed in letter steaming. 

The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bu- 
colic brain that Ireland and Great Britain were under- 
going one of those periodical visitations of secret con- 
spiracy which enliven the monotony of existence in 
those superlatively happy and contented realms. From 
the amount of his postal communications, and from the 
brilliant reports of a gifted county inspector. Sir Wil- 
liam strongly suspected that one Ryan, a Tipperary 
farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than 
turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no 
positive proof that Ryan's whole soul was not centred in 
his Early Yorks and Mangolds. So resort was had to 
the Grahamizing process. 

For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his 
correspondence began to get muddled, — his tailor's bill 
coming in an envelope addressed in the spidery calig- 
graphy of his beloved Mary, a scented billet-doux from 
that devoted one arrivino^ in a formidable-lookinsf offi- 
cial revenue envelope which should have contained an 
income-tax schedule, a subpoena to appear as a witness 
in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an envelope 
with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other 
envelopes being found to contain nothing at all. 



36 AN IRISH CRA^r-QUlLT. 

Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he deter- 
mined to cry quits with the disturbers of his gum and 
sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy for the 
purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the 
intelligent sub-inspector should know that he was going 
to receive letters in that euphonious cognomen. 

Now, Murphy s were as plentiful round there as counts 
in a state indictment or nominations at a Democratic 
convention. You couldn't throw a stone in the loca- 
tion without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You 
couldn't flourish a kippeen there without peeling the 
skin off a Murphy. If you heard any one appealing to 
the masses, collectively or individually, to tread on the 
tail of his coat, you might depend it was a champion 
Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, 
the shortest was a Murphy ; the stout man who took a 
square rood of corduroy for a waistcoat was a Murphy, 
and the mite who could have built a dress suit for him- 
self out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a 
good harvest smiled on that part of the country people 
said the Murphys were thriving, and when small-pox 
decimated the population it was spoken of as a blight 
among the Murphys. 

So, when the order came down from the Castle that 
all letters directed to Murphy should be stopped and 
forwarded to headquarters for perusal, it might natur- 
ally be expected that, even under ordinary circum- 
stances, the local postmasters would have decent pack- 
ages to return to Dublin. 

But Ryan didn't mean to be niggardly in his dona- 
tions to the central bureau of the postal pimpdom. He 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 37 

took the clan Murphy into his confidence, and every 
Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy in 
every other parish, and those Murphy s wrote to other 
Murphy s, and the fiery cross went round among the 
Murphys generally, and the fiat went forth that every 
Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as 
many letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were 
after as they could put pen to. It didn't matter what 
they were about, — the crops, the weather, the price of 
provisions, — anything, in fact, or nothing at all. The 
language was of minor importance, — Irish, however, 
preferred, — and the Murphy who paid his postage 
would be considered a traitor to the cause. 

Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation. 

The first day of the interception of the Murphy's let- 
ters, three bags full were deposited in the Under Secre- 
tary's oflSce for perusal. 

The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the 
room. 

The third morning that room was filed up, and they 
stuffed Mr. Burke's private sanctum with spare bags. 

The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bed- 
rooms. 

The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arrang- 
ing bales of Murphy letters on the stairs. 

Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was 
Sunday. 

But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every 
right-thinking Murphy to let himself loose, and on 
Monday three van loads of letters for Mr. Murphy were 
§ent out to the viceregal lodge. 



38 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about 
a week, when the grand climax came. It was St. 
Valentine's morning, and, in addition to the orthodox 
correspondence, every man, woman, and child who 
loved or hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contrib- 
uted his or her quota to the general chaos. 

The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of 
the Army Service Corps, and from 8 a. m. till midnight 
the quays and Phoenix Park were blocked with a cara- 
van of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs 
and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and let- 
ters and illustrated protestations of affection or highly- 
colored expressions of contempt for Murphy from every 
quarter of the inhabitable globe. 

Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to 
telegraph to the War Office for permission to take the 
magazine and the Ordnance Survey quarters, and the 
Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the 
intercepted epistles in. 

Forster wouldn't undertake to go through the work, 
— the order to overhaul Murphy's letters had come from 
Harcourt, and Harcourt would have to do it himself. 
Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the task 
that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign 
unless he was relieved. 

Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to 
convey the Murphy correspondence out to the middle 
of the Atlantic, where it was committed to the treacher- 
ous waves. 

To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are 
occasionally picked up a thousand leagues from land, 



AN IliI8U CKAZr-QUILT. 39 

on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir William Vernon 
Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a 
week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is 
laid up with the gout. 



AN OLD IRISH TUNE. 

WE had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted 
all day. 
And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay 
By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood 
A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud. 
Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp. 
And misery reigned all supreme in the camp, 
When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June, 
There stole on our senses an old Irish tune. 

It crept low and clear through the whispering pines, 

It crossed the dull stream from the enemy's lines. 

And over the dreams of the slumberers cast 

The magical spell of a voice from the past ; 

It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain 

Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with it^ 

strain ; 
And soothed, as of old by a mother's soft croon. 
Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune. 

Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile, 
Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle, 
Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet. 
For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet. 



40 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Once again in old homes we were children at play, 
Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray. 
Or burned with the passion of manhood's hot noon, 
And loved o'er again in that old Irish tune. 

A Johnny who crouched by the river's dark marge, 
To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge. 
And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still, 
Most tempting of marks for a rifleman's skill ; 
A dozen bright barrels could cover his head. 
But never a ball on its death-mission sped ; 
Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon 
Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune ! 

It linked with its strains ere they melted away 
True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray, 
But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe, 
To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago. 
The air seemed to throb with invisible tears 
Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers. 
And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon, 
Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune. 



te 



HARVEY DUFF." 



THERE is no country in Christendom whose inhabi- 
tants are so susceptible to music as the Irish. An 
itinerant musician, wandering round the different fairs 
in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes or 
fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 41 

of Hamelin. " God Save Ireland " will hush the listen- 
ers into reverential silence; " Savourneen Deelish " 
will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment 
before were flushed with merriment ; " The Wind that 
Shakes the Barley " will agitate the toes and rustle the 
petticoats of two thirds of the living humanity in ear- 
shot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself a John 
L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing 
the muscles of the manhood about him, let him try the 
"Boyne Water" for five minutes. If he don't get 
pretty well scattered about, it will be because he has 
been killed in the lump. 

But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the 
composers existing for all the centuries have devoted 
all their genius, there is none so startling, so instan- 
taneous, so blood-curdling as that produced upon a 
constable by the strains of "Harvey Duff." A red rag 
flourished in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade 
pamphlet in a Republican convention, a Chinese police- 
man ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a trapped 
mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly 
growling outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical 
ebullitions of wrath ; but if you want to see a forty- 
horse power, Kansas cyclone. Rocky Mountain tor- 
nado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and 
brimstone, dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the ele- 
ments combined, crash of rage, hate, venom, spleen, 
disgust, and agony, just learn "Harvey Duff*," take 
a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase your- 
self in a suit of mail, and whistle it for the first police- 
man you meet. The result will amply repay the 



42 AN IRISH CRAZY- QUILT. 

journey. You needn't take a return ticket. If he be 
anything like an average peeler, you won't want it. 
It might be as well to ascertain beforehand the number 
of ribs you possess. It will interest you in hospital to 
know how many are missing ; that is, if you are lucky 
enough to go to hospital. 

Somebody wrote, "The path of glory leads but to 
the grave." The performance of "Harvey Duff" leads 
generally to the nearest cemetery. 

How, when, where, and why "Harvey Duff" was 
composed, or who was its composer, or in what manner 
the air has become indissolubly associated with the Irish 
police, is one of those mysteries which, like the author- 
ship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable 
theories and speculations, but will never be definitely 
settled. 

I suspect that " Harvey Duff," like Topsy, "growed." 

There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch 
of a process-server and informer, in Boucicault's drama, 
"The Shaughraun," but the popular "Harvey Duff" is 
of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled in 
Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as 
much out of place as a bottle of rum in a convention of 
pro*liibitionists. It is equally difficult to ascertain the 
cause of the aversion entertained to the melody by the 
constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force 
has been established a thousand times. Bodies of police 
have been known to submit to volleys of stones on rare 
occasions, but, in a long and varied experience, I never 
met a constable yet who could stand "Harvey Duff" for 
thirty seconds. 



AN IKISII CllAZy-C^UJLT. 43 

I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drog- 
heda, the story is told that, when Dr. Collier, a relative 
who had been away for some years, returned to his 
native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor 
jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him "Harvey 
Duff," as he was anxious to master that national anthem. 
Before that disciple of Galen had time to finish his 
request, he found himself battering the pavement with 
the back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie 
itself into a knot, and the other hysterically pointing in 
the direction of the harvest-moon, w^hilst the furious 
Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in the surgeon's 
body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in. 

In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, 
a bright, curly-headed little boy of the age of five 
years was marched into court under an escort of one 
sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables, 
and there and then solemnly charged with having intim- 
idated the aforesaid force of her Majesty's defenders. 
It appeared that the small and chubby criminal, on pass- 
ing the barracks, had tried to whistle something which 
the garrison imagined to be "Harvey DutF," and before 
the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub- 
inspector's Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the 
marvellous discipline and bulldog valor of his command, 
resulted in the capture of the infant, without any seri- 
ous loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old rebel 
was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock 
policemen might not in future pace their dismal rounds 
w^ith their hearts in their mouths and their souls in their 
boots, — that is, if an Irish policeman has either a heart 



M AN IRISH ClIAZY-QUILT. 

or a soul. The popular belief is that they discard both 
along with their civilian clothes.* 

A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an 
ardent wearer of the dark-green uniform got a lift in 
the world, and gave an unique gymnastic entertainment 
for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him 
in the " City of the Violated Treaty," through the same 
"Harvey Duff." He was passing by a lofty grain 
warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer was indus- 
triously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which 
w^ere attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. 
The sub-constable, pausing to survey the operations, 
was horror-stricken to hear the man aloft enlivening his 
toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the atro- 
cious " Harvey Duff." Fired with heroic zeal, he deter- 
mined to capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence 
his seditious solo. Seizing the corn-porter below, he 
threatened him with the direst penalties of the law if 
by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade of his 
impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, 
that strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the 
signal "all right," and the operatic minstrel began to 
wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an avenging angel 
with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told 
Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not ; 
but when the passionate peeler was elevated some thirty 
feet from Mother Earth the ascent suddenly ceased, and 
there he was left suspended in mid-air, twirling and 

* This incident was recorded at the time in the Irish newspapers, was debated in 
Parliament, and formed the subject of rich comic cartoons in Pat, the Weekly Ne20s, 
the Weekly Freeman^ and United Ireland, 



AN IKISH CRAZY-QUILT. 45 

twisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out 
upon the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity 
that made the atmosphere hirid. His promotion lasted 
for fully half an hour, and, when the arrival of re- 
enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the 
crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic 
feats, and wondering at his ornamental objurgations, 
thought it better to dissolve before he could recover his 
])reath. 

I am not aware whether "Harvey Duff" had ever any 
words attached to its obnoxious measure, but I think it 
would be a pity not to convey the ideas of the Royal 
Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and it 
is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the 
following lines to that immaculate body : — 

" HARVEY DUFF." 

My load of woes is hard to bear, 

I 'm losing flesh with dark despair, 

And the top of my head is so awfully bare 

It isn't worth while to dye my hair. 

Would you the cause be after knowing 

That makes me the baldest peeler going, 

That has changed my sweet tones into accents gruff? 

'Tis a horrible tune they call "Harvey Duff." 

Oh, "Harvey Duff ! " oh, "Harvey Duff ! " 

If I've not heard you often enough, 

May a Land League convention dance jigs on my 

bufi; 
And keep time to the music of "Harvey Duff! " 



46 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT, 

I was once with a bailiff serving writs, 
My skull was cracked to spoil my wits, 
For the bailiif escaped in the darkness dim. 
And the mob malafoostered me for him. 
But the case that circles my brain is thick, 
It cannot be damaged by stone or stick. 
And I 'd rather submit to such treatment rough 
Than be safe to the chorus of " Harvey Duff ! " 

Oh, " Harvey Duff ! " oh, " Harvey Duff ! " 
Should I meet your composer some day in Bruff, 
My bayonet into him with pleasure I '11 stuff 
Till he '11 wish he had never learnt " Harvey Duff." 

When duty has called me miles away. 
Though hungry and cold, I must needs obey, 
And there wasn't a Christian of either sex 
Would give me a sandwich or pint of X. 
I couldn't coax dry bread and water 
From father or son, from mother or daughter. 
But I always could reckon on more than enough 
Of that kind of refreshment called "Harvey Duff ! " 

Oh, " Harvey Duff ! " oh, " Harvey Duff ! " 
Of you I get more than quantum svff, 
And would to the Lord I could collar the muff 
Who invented that blasphemous " Harvey Duff ! " 

I'm so destroyed I wouldn't care 
To go alone to rebel Clare, 
And with a reckless spirit dare 
To take a farm that 's vacant there. 



AN IKISII CKAZY-QUILT. 47 

I know the peasants ])old would scatter 
My four bones to the wind — no matter ; 
They 'd wake me decent — no heart so tough 
As to mock a dead peeler with " Harvey Duff ! " 

Oh, "Harvey Duff!" oh, "Harvey Duff!" 
I wipe my eyes upon my cuff, 
As I think that my soul will depart m a huff 
To the requiem anthem of " Harvey Duff ! " 



A SEDITIOUS SLIDE. 

WE learn from a special despatch which has been 
cabled via Shanghai and Yokohama to Britain's 
representatives abroad that the demon of anarchy has 
again broke loose in Ireland, that the flood-gates of 
sedition have been once more thrown open, and the 
pestilential torrents of a whole lot of things are delug- 
ing society. We feel that a Webster's Unabridged 
Dictionary and a very fair acquaintanceship with the 
slang of nearly thirty States are utterly inadequate to 
express our tumultuous thoughts on reading the follow- 
ing touching epistle from Cornet Gadfly, who is at pres- 
ent attached to the suite of the Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland : — 

There is some dark plot afoot here to destroy the 
peace of mind and happiness of her Majesty's de- 
fenders. 

I was wending m^y cheerful way last evening toward 
my temporary lodgings in the bosom of that highly 
interesting family, the Higginses, who never did any- 



48 AN IRISH CRAZr-QUlLt. 

thing so low or ignoble as to tvork for their country, 
and are, consequently, enjoying the reward of their 
virtue, in the shtipe of a big pension from a grateful 
government. I was whistling contentedly the refrain 
of England's "Marseillaise," "We don't want to fight, 
but by jingo when we do ! " 

On turning the corner of Kutland Square, my legs 
evinced a sudden and unexpected interest in the atmos- 
pheric and astronomic condition of the heavens, for I 
found myself progressing homeward at the rate of 
twenty miles an hour on the back of my head, with one 
foot pointing triumphantly to Saturn, and the other 
indicating the whereabouts of the Mill^y Way. 

Having satisfied myself that my bodily inversion was 
not the result of an earthquake, I wound myself up at 
the Kotunda railings, ejected a few front teeth and 
some powerful ejaculations, and surveyed the position. 

1 had come to grief on a slide some eighteen inches 
wide and about forty feet in length. The mutinous, 
seditious, rebellious, and barbarous juvenile population 
of that ward must have been nearly a week improving 
that slide, until it was so slippery that a bucket of 
pitch couldn't have stuck on it, and a coating of Dub- 
lin mud as adhesive as a dish of Boston baked beans, 
attached to my boot soles, afibrded no protection to 
either person or property. The whole fiendish arrange- 
ment must have been organized with devilish ingenuity 
by either a Fenian engineer or a National League archi- 
tect. Eage, anguish, revenge, agony, surged through 
my bosom as I contemplated the icy snare. 

But it is stran2:e how the misfortunes of others recon- 



Aisr IRISH CRA^Y- QUILT. 49 

cile us to our own. In this instance, balm was poured 
upon the troubled waters of my soul and my head was 
metaphorically bandaged and plastered as I saw ap- 
proaching the fatal spot, Ensign Wilson of the Lan- 
cers, and the fair Araminta Higgins. 

They were mashing. 

He, in all the pristine glory of a new tunic and a 
re-dyed sash, preserved the best traditions of the Brit- 
ish uniform by the ardor of his suit. He was pas- 
sionate, eloquent, effusive ; she was bashful, simpering, 
and lackadaisical, as became a pensioned Higgins. 

" Araminta," he murmured softly, " believe no base 
calumnies. I am as true to thee as — as — as thy 
fiither to his pension or the needle to the pole. 
I am thine — thine only. No power on earth can 
sever us." 

At this moment he shot off suddenly, leaving his hat 
at the lady's feet and slinging his umbrella out into the 
roadway. A few minutes afterward a dejected and 
dilapidated British officer was indulging in profane 
observations of a remarkably ornamental and original 
description as he supported himself against a friendly 
lamp-post, while the dormant Irish blood in the fickle 
Araminta asserted itself through the medium of a coarse 
laugh. 

They vanished in the darkness, but I do not think 
the enamored ensign spooned any more that night. 
Barely had they disappeared, when two prominent 
members of the Constitutional Club crossed the street 
from the direction of the house of a certain eminent 
judge. They were energetically discnssilig the Na- 



50 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

tional League campaign in Ulster. They neared the 
precipice — I mean the slide. 

" This Parnellite invasion will fail — utterly fiiil — if 
we remain firm," said the taller of the two, Col. K — 
H — . "Unity and perseverance must be our watch- 
words. United we stand — " 

He did not finish the sentence, for they became 
divided, and his head rang out a hollow note of defi- 
ance to the breeze. However, despite his desire for 
unity, the Tory victim did not remain long rooted to 
the soil, but made tracks for the nearest saloon to 
recuperate his exhausted energies. 

The next visitor to the insurrectionary skating-rink 
was a well-known attorney, who is at the present mo- 
ment engaged in an abortive effort to discover an Irish 
constituency that will have him at any price. Mr. N. 
looked an attorney in every inch. You could read six- 
and-eight pence in every wrinkle of his rugged counte- 
nance ; his protruding coat-tails were veritable embodi- 
ments oi fieri-facias; his stiff", angular collar had the 
disagreeable similitude of a bill of costs, and the 
leather bag he carried in his hand was a positive ar- 
senal of writs and decrees and processes. I felt hor- 
ror-stricken as I saw this legal luminary stepping 
briskly to destruction. 

Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little 
milliner with a bandbox and a brown-paper parcel 
stepped upon the other. 

They had never met before, but the instant their feet 
touched that atrocious slide they darted together with 
the enthusiasm of old lovers. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 51 

Then there was a collision, and a confused combina- 
tion of legal documents and straw bonnet, proceedings 
in bankruptcy and colored ribbons, opinions of counsel 
and hairpins ; and when the law adviser got home he 
found in his bas^ an artificial bang; where he had been 
looking for the draft of a will, and that poor little mil- 
liner's duck of a bonnet had vanished out of her ruined 
bandbox, while its place was filled with a horrible notice 
to claimants and incumbrancers. 

When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze 
the pantomime was continued by new artists. A poor- 
law guardian, who had voted against the North Dublin 
Union adopting the laborers* act, was explaining his 
reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus : 
" You would have done the same yourself in my posi- 
tion. Put yourself in my place." 

And away he went, express speed, on his hands and 
knees, till he was brought to a stop by his head thun- 
dering on a policeman's belt. Then the policeman sat 
on top of him, and a postman threw a double somer^ 
sault over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream 
Guards marching smartly round the corner got mixed 
up with them, and it wasn't till the policeman had 
half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guard- 
ian had got the double bass round his neck for a collar, 
and the postman had been engulfed in the big drum 
that order was restored, and constitutional peace tri- 
umphed once more over revolutionary chaos. 

But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, 
how much longer are we going to tolerate a state of 
society which permits slides and pitfalls and chasms to 



52 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs, 
and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation 
to loyal homes ? It 's awful ! 



IVAN PETROKOFFSKY. 

IVAN Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division 
Of the Army of the Danube, is a private — noth- 
ing more ; 
And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision 
On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his 
corps. 
He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to 
reading, 
And even when he has a thought his words are few 
and rude ; 
So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same pro- 
ceeding 
Rough Ivan's stray ideas were most miserably crude. 
But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental 
order. 
Which explains in glowing language why the Rus- 
sians go to war ; 
And he holds some dim idea that he 's on the Turkish 
border, 
"For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the 
Czar ! " 

Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted — 

His feelings, for a private, are completely out of 
place — 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 53 

And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering 
steps he parted, 
No heroic agitation was depicted on his face. 
It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not 
found him, 
When the marching order reached him at his home 
that bitter day, 
When the younger Ivan's chubby little arms were 
folded round him, 
And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded 
sway. 
There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga 
village 
(So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are), 
When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood 
and pillage, 
" For the glory of the Emph*e and the honor of the 
Czar ! " 

Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division 

Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind, 
For within the deep recesses of his heart is a sus- 
picion 
He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left 
behind. 
In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and 
gory, 
By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life- 
stream spent. 
And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory 
Of dying for his country to be happy or content. 



54 AN IIIISII CRAZY-QUILT. 

He has seen his comrades fallmg round, all mangled, 

torn, and bleeding, 
And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes 

and kindred far. 
While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed 

bodies feeding. 
Of "the glory of the Empire or the honor of the 

Czar ! " 



THE EMPEROR'S RING. 

THE stillness of death broods o'er valley and moun- 
tain. 
The snow lies below like a funeral shroud ; 
The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain ; 
Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each 
cloud ; 
When, hark ! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the 
thunder 
Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound, 
Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder. 
The sentinel checks his monotonous round. 
Ho ! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber 

With pause the swift flight of yon messenger',s wing. 
For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber. 
The horseman who rides with the Emperor's ring. 

Fresh horse and new pistols — some phrases of warning, 
Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind. 

And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning 
Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern 
wind. 



AN iUioii CRAZY-QUILT. 55 

Out, out through the forests — on, on o'er the meadows, 

While castle and cabin and hamlet and town 
Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows. 

With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown, 
The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver ; 

To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers 
cling ; 
And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver 

The ominous flash of the Emperor's ring. 

Some guess, but none question, the message he carries, 

All divine by the sign 't is of life or of death ; 
And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries ; 
Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first 
breath. 
For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him, 

Nor ocean a sheltering island so far 
As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend 
him. 
Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White 
Czar. 
So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker 

Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring. 
Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the 
rancor 
Of one who bears with him the Emperor's ring. 

We Russians are brave, but we only are human ; 

We cower at a power it is death to offend, 
Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman 

From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend. 



56 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 

The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder ; 

Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim ; 
The blood in yon courtier's veins may be colder 

Than the serfs, but 't will serve for their feast all 
the same. 
Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely, 

These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king. 
And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only 

A few whitened bones and the Emperor's ring. 



BLACK LORIS. 

SPURS jingle and lances shine ; 
A hundred brave horsemen in line ; 
Gay voices ring as they merrily sing, 
For why should true hearts repine? 
The pathway is level and balmy the air, 
Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care ; 
The sun has but reached its meridian height, 
"Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.' 
When, crash ! from the thickets that border the way, 
Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray ; 
In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes. 
And half of the sotnia fall 'neath their blows. 
But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah, 
With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar, 
Charge fifty brave horsemen in line ! 

Oh, fatal the rifle's crack ! 
Ten heroes fight back to back, 

And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust 
A wolf from the howling pack. 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 57 

How the yelping curs in myriads swarm ! 
Ten new foes rise from eacli prostrate form, 
They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground, 
Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around. 
The ten are scattered ; they seem to be 
Like derelict spars in an angry sea. 
But never a Cossack was known to yield 
While his arm a lance or sabre could wield. 
Oh, weep their valor by distant Don, 
The waves are engulphing them one by one ! 
But two remain back to back ! 

His comrade sinks down with a groan — 
Black Loris is fighting alone, 

His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed. 
And his arms as heavy as stone. 
" Surrender ! " a hundred harsh voices demand. 
For answer he sabres the chief of the band. 
But his arm is shivered in twain — he feels 
The earth swim round him — he gasps, he reels. 
And gleam on his vision old scenes afar, 
As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar — 
Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal? 
No, no ! there 's a rattle of hoof and of steel ! 
Black Loris is not alone ! 

No tears for the ninety-nine. 
The nation's heart is their shrine ; 

But glory's bays and the Emperor's praise 
For the one man left of the line ! 
The Don's deep waters will long be dried. 
And stemmed the flow of the Ural's tide, 



58 AN IRISH CllAZY-QUILT. 

The strength and glory of Russia depart, 
And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart, 
Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell 
Of dashing Loris who fought so well. 
Whose comrades tore him from out the grave, 
Whose medal the Emperor's own hands gave. 
And for years to come, when trotting along 
Ural and Don, men will sing this song — 
" The One and the Ninety-Nine ! " 



WHO SHOT PHLYNN'S HAT? 

I. 

MR. PHINEAS PHLYNN, J. P., was a few 
years ago the agent upon the Irish estates of 
that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic 
nobleman. Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer 
performs the onerous functions of that office, it is 
because he has taken to a far-off and less humid sphere 
his various and variegated vices, and has probably by 
his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added 
another to the abundant torments of Pandemonium. 
In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to his own satis- 
faction, but a great deal more to the misery of his 
neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by 
no means a happy man. His commission for collecting 
the rents of his absentee master was only a paltry 
shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore's landed 
property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and 
Mr. Phlynn's habits included an addiction to French 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 59 

wines and Irish whiskey, a decided inclination to woo 
Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures 
at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which 
plunged him into frequent financial scrapes, he felt 
that he must wring a bigger percentage out of his 
employer and increase his emoluments. 

But how was it to be done ? 

He couldn't raise the rents. They were so high 
already that the tenantry had some difficulty in reach- 
ing them, and were beginning to indulge in mutinous 
murmurs about abatements and reductions and re- 
adjustments, and the other pestilential, communistic, 
and diabolical ideas of the Land League. Phineas had 
been complaining for months to his noble master about 
the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as 
he described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins 
who thirsted for his gore and wanted to perforate his 
magisterial hide with surreptitious bullets ; and Phineas 
had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks deserved 
a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional 
income. But the only consolation Lord Oglemore 
vouchsafed w^as an assurance to Mr. Phlynn that if 
those " demnied Irish rascals " should make his carcass 
a repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the 
beggars should have their rents raised fifty per cent 
all around. This didn't console Phineas worth a cent, 
for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his fathers 
with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he 
couldn't enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per 
cent, rise in any exuberant degree. Besides, the levity 
of his lordship's remarks induced the assent to o-uess 



60 AN lUISII CliAZr-QUILT. 

that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal 
forebodinors. So Phineas resolved that he would brino^ 
matters to a crisis. There should be an outrage — a 
sanguinary, blood-curdling outrage, that would prove 
to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent carried his 
life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least 
eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gath- 
ered in perpetual peril. 

II. 

There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had 
the most remote notion of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. 
Phlynn shot himself — at least, he shot his own hat. 
There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking 
this horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief 
of these was the fact that if any desperate tenant had 
sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn's hat, he 
wouldn't have paused to ascertain whether Mr. 
Phlynn's head was in it or not — really, he might have 
preferred that the hat should be so tenanted. A cir- 
cumstance of that sort would have been decidedly 
inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his 
own hat, no such objectionable mistake was possible. 
Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat on the roadside 
between his own residence and the nearest police bar- 
rack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front 
rim off and the other tore a hole in the crown. Then 
carefully replacing his dilapidated head-gear upon his 
undisturbed cranium, he flung his revolver into the 
adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence 
of the sub-inspector in the police barrack afox*emen- 



AN IRISH Crazy- QUILT. 61 

tioned, and poured into the astonished ears of that hor- 
rified luminary a ghastly story of his terrible encounter 
with a band of four masked miscreants, who had fired 
at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing 
his head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat ! 

III. 

The excitement in connection with the matter was 
intense. The country was scoured for miles around, 
and thirty or forty arrests made. The revolver, of 
course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn's terrible 
tale. The London papers teemed with denunciations 
of the weakness of the government which permitted 
such a state of affairs in a civilized community. Illus- 
trations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages of 
English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for 
any information that would lead to the conviction of 
anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an exciting 
speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he 
positively kept those hereditary legislators awake for 
twenty minutes — a feat unparalleled in the history of 
that chamber. There was not so much stir and fuss in 
that assembly since the day it was rumored that John 
Brown had been offered a peerage under the title of 
Earl of Glenlivet. For nearly half of the twenty 
minutes that the noble senators kept awake it was soul- 
stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by 
their emotions. 

All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated hy 
the temporary prominence given to him as the em- 



62 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

ployer of an Irish agent who had been fired at, that 
he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he 
could manage to get some of his tenants hanged or 
transported for the affair, he would become quite a lion 
in London society. With this laudable ambition per- 
meating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had 
concluded his outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the 
headquarters of the London detective force in Scotland 
Yard, and, by munificent promises in the event of 
success, secured the services of that eminent thief- 
catcher, Lispector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. 
The following day, Spriggins, got up as an English 
horse dealer seeking for Irish equine bargains, left 
London for Leitrim. 

In the mean time the Irish government, who did not 
feel satisfied with the conduct of the local constabulary, 
had deputed Sergeant Crawley of the G division, 
Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same 
neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas 
Phlynn's hat. 

IV. 

p In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the 
scent. From all he could hear, see, and judge, he 
concluded that the outrao*e was the work of stran2:ers. 
He had already spotted a suspicious stranger. 

About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the 
trail. It was evident that the deed had been com- 
mitted by some one from a distance, because every 
man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles 
had been arrested, and established their innocence. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 63 

The foreigner who had failed would he likely to renew 
the attempt. Were there any non-residents loafing 
around? Yes ! Crawley had fixed his man. 

It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was 
firmly convinced that Crawley had made ribbons of 
Phlynn's hat, Crawley was taking measures to arrest 
Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector 
Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a 
warrant to arrest both Spriggins and Crawley, who 
were passing under the respective names of Jones and 
Brennan. 

V. 

Spriggins, on the first day of November, called 
upon Phlynn. 

"Mr. Phlynn," said he, "I have got the leader of 
the gang who fired at you." 

" The devil you have," said Phlynn. You see 
Phlynn had very strong reasons for doubting the 
accuracy of the information. 

"Yes," replied Spriggins ; "I have him, no mistake." 

" Where is he ? " queried Phineas. 

"Here." 

" What ! " shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of 
penal servitude for revolver practice on his own hat 
made his heart jump. "Who, what, where, when, 
why, how — " 

"Oh," responded Scotland Yard, "I forgot. Let 
me introduce myself. I am Inspector Spriggins, of 
the London detective police. I have been commis- 
sioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business. 



64 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

I Ve fished. I may say I have landed my sahnon. I 
just want you to fill me up a warrant for the arrest of 
James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and 
whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular 
occupation, and at present sojourning at the Railway 
Hotel, Mohill. I '11 get the police there to give a 
hand. No excuses, please. I've hooked my trout, 
I 've trapped my rabbit, I 've bagged my fox, I 've 
snared my hare — I have him, I tell you. Fill up the 
warrant." 

Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the 
sagacious Spriggins departed on his mission of legal 
retribution on the body of the unconscious Crawley. 

YI. 

" Send down three men from the G division in plain 
clothes with a warrant for the arrest of John Jones, for 
the attempted murder of Phineas Phlynn, Lord Ogle- 
more's agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no 
time." This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch 
from Sergeant Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under 
Secretary for Ireland, in accordance with which three 
big " G's " made their first appearance in Mohill on the 
memorable 1st of November. 

VII. 

Sub-Inspector Blake told ofi* ten men for special 
duty on Nov. 1, and about noon arrived with them on 
three outside cars in the little town of Mohill. " Now, 
boys," was his parting advice, "this fellow Jones is a 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 65 

tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. 
Brennan 's a rowdy, too. When I whistle, rush in and 
baton both of 'em if they show fight. If any of the 
hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the 
bayonet." 

"Two men with myself will be enough," finally 
remarked Spriggins to Head Constable Walsh, of 
Mohill. " Our bird 's in the commercial room of the 
Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps 't would be better, 
to avoid suspicion, if your men didn't come in uni- 
form, and they might wait outside till I whistled for 
them." 

It was so arranged. 

Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the 
little hotel, describing the personal peculiarities of the 
fore-doomed Jones to three ofiicial Goliaths who had 
joined him from Dublin, when the door opened and 
the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his 
prey in deep consultation with three sturdy farmers, 
Jones muttered softly to himself, "By Jingo, I 've got 
the whole crowd ! " and instantly sounding the signal, 
sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right 
hand and the warrant fluttering in his left. 

" Holy Moses ! " gasped Crawley ; " they mean to 
murder us too," and he ducked under the table, where 
Spriggins let go three or four shots at him, while two 
G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables 
grappled with the two G men, and the remaining 
Dublin detective began a racket on his own account by 
firing round promiscuously, taking a chip off Spriggins' 
ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley's cheek, and deposit- 



Q6 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

ing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, 
by a shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub- 
Inspector Blake, his soul afire with war's dread echoes, 
leaped into the apartment just in time to receive on his 
sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by 
Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under 
the table, was carrying on a destructive artillery bom- 
bardment of similar bombshells and grenades. Of 
course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers 
charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They 
skivered Spriggins, they splintered Crawley, they 
committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred skins 
of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilara- 
tion of the hour they skewered each other up against 
the wainscoating, and pinned each other against the 
table, and prodded each other through the arms and 
legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other's 
blood for their Queen and Constitution in the most 
liberal and disinterested manner. Finally, when there 
wasn't a square three-inch patch of whole skin 
among the combined forces, the chambermaids and 
waiters came in and took the entire lot prisoners. 
Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal pro- 
duction of warrants, general expressions of regret, and 
a mournfully unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, 
unsolved problems of agrarian crimes would ever 
remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas 
Phlynn's hat. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 67 

THE RED-HEART DAISY. 

A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY. 

THE clouds of battle-tempest had blown over ; 
The storm of wrath 
Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover, 

And in its path 
Had left the human cyclone's awful traces 
In quivering bodies and distorted faces. 

Among the bloody drift of dead and dying 

That strewed the ground, 
A Prince and Serf, in Death's communion lying, 

The searchers found. 
Earth drank both life-streams ; as their current ended, 
Blue blood and peasant's in one tide had blended. 

Some essence from the forms interred together 

Enriched the clay. 
And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather 

'Neath which they lay — 
Rough hide and dainty skin — deep brain and hollow — 
Silver and iron — Yulcan and Apollo. 

And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled 

The mountain's crest. 
Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled 

Among the rest. 
Upon the spot where baron's dream of glory 
Had mingled with the toiler's duller story. 



es 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



Those who would make our land a frame of metal, 

With jewelled heart, 
Would have us view the daisy's centre petal 

As thing apart 
From its white fringe ; and, bringing death to both, 
Would mar the flow'ret's, like the nation's, growth. 



THE TIDE IS TURNING. 

So, masters who have ruled so lonof 

With cruel rods of iron, 
Who sought with gyves and fetters strong 

Our freedom to environ, 
In plenitude of sullen power 

Our tearful pleadings spurning : 
Prepare ye for your fated hour, 
Beware — the tide is turning ! 

Yes ! yes ! at last we fling the past 

With all its woes behind us. 
And stand to-day in firm array 
Against the bonds that bind us. 

With brutal grip of tyrant hand 

Ye choked our aspirations, 
And made our fertile motherland 

The Niobe of nations ; 
To feed the vices of your lords, 

Ye stole the people's earning. 
And held the theft with hireling swords — 

But now the tide is turnino^ ! 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 69 

Yes ! yes ! to-day your hated sway 

Is tottering to ruin, 
The Irish race a future face 

That will not harbor you in ! 

Ye kept us chained to ignorance, 

In fear that education 
Miaht teach our brains the wisest chance 

To liberate the nation. 
But, spite of all your guile and thrall, 

Our people still are learning 
What most will tend your yoke to rend. 
And so the tide is turning. 

Yes ! yes ! the cause, despite your laws. 

Each rusty chain is breaking ; 
The portents smile upon our isle. 
For Ireland is awaking. 

From meadows rich of smooth Kildare 

To frowning crags of Kerry, 
From ocean-girdled shores of -Clare 

To busy marts of Derry, 
In our opprest, north, south, east, west, 

A newer spirit's burning — 
The conquering fire of brave desire. 
That tells the tide is turning. 

Yes ! yes ! we mark through centuries dark 

The light at last is blazing. 
Till on our brow no serf-brand now 
Can chill a friendly gazing. 



C5 



.70 AN IKISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



OUR OWN AGAIN. 

The voice of freedom 's soundin< 

From farthest shore to shore ; 
And Erin's pulse is bounding 

With manhood's blood once more 
Our sluggard trance is broken, 

We stand erect as men, 
Our stern demand is spoken, 

We '11 have our own asfain ! 



No futile bribes can stay us, 

No traitor chiefs control, 
No wheedling tones delay us, 

No terrors blanch our soul. 
The gloomy hour has vanished 

And gone forever when 
We could be crushed or banished — 

We '11 have our own again ! 

The bluster of the Tories, 

And Whigdom's tempting lies. 
Are vain and foolish stories 

We spurn and we despise. 
We 've torn the landlord foeman 

From out his reeking den, 
And now we '11 halt for no man — 

We '11 have our own again ! 

Our eyes are lifted sunward. 
No power can bar our course. 

Our march must still be onward, 
Spite either guile or force ; 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 71 

And be it by the sabre, 

The voice, the vote, or pen, 
Or steadfast, patient labor — 

We '11 have our own again ! 



THE TALE OF A TAIL. 

There 's a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Maca- 
roon, 
Where they won't believe in Parnell or the Land 

League very soon ; 
Where to call a priest " his rev'rence " treads upon 

their pious corns, 
For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the 

Pope wears horns ; 
'T is there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of 

July 
Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the 

Shannon dry ; 
And 'tis there, where papal bulls could never make a 

sinner quail. 
That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with 

her tail. 

Pat Duggan, finding CliiTord Lloyd too much for him 
in Clare, 

Thought he 'd try his fate in Ulster, so he took a hold- 
ing there. 

And of all the spots of Orange North, that most 
unlucky coon 

Had the evil chance to squat in " no surrender " Maca- 
roon. 



72 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass, 

He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to 

mass. 
Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to 

assail. 
Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer's tail. 

'T was in the summer season, and the flies that skir- 
mished round 
Discovered that that cow's soft ears were A 1 feeding 

ground, 
And they gathered in their masses and formed animated 

plugs, 
In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs ; 
And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles 

rose, 
The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her 

nose, 
But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor 

yet free sale. 
For she exercised coercion very strongly with her 

tail. 

When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots 

on tick, 
She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with 

a flick ; 
And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain 

divide. 
With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter 

far and wide. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 73 

Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong 

behind 
That when her tail would whisk, 'twas like a gust of 

stormy wind. 
Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his 

flail, 
That cow came in and threshed the oats completely 

with her tail. 



Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning 

went, 
And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely dis- 
content, 
Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and 

then 
That the time for speech was past — the knife was 

mightier than the pen. 
They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the 

shears, 
And Ned Malone, who 'd often sang of clipping Croppy 

ears, 
To see that Duggan's butter would not pay another 

gale. 
But they little knew his cow had such an energetic 

tail. 

When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and 

Malone 
Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan's byre 

alone. 



74 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

The wind that whistled through the trees no warning 



signal 



gave, 



As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave. 
Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the 

hasp, 
But before the pride of victory their eager hands could 

grasp. 
That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail. 
And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail. 

And she wasn't quite content with that : she rushed 
from out the byre, 

Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on 
fire ; 

She seized (with cool indiflerence to very touching 
groans) 

Malone around the waist and smashed his most impor- 
tant bones ; 

And when the jury gathered round his mangled frag- 
ments there, 

And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of 
skin and hair. 

That jury placed Pat Duggan's cow on very heavy bail. 

Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail. 

And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass, 
That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to 

mass ; 
And that cow was so respected that no bigot would 

offend her 
Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of " no surrender." 



AN IRISH CKAZr-QUILT. 75 

Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July, 
The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by ; 
They would rather that the glory they commemorate 

should pale. 
Than again tempt Duggan's awful cow to exercise her 

tail. 



THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS. 

[In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, 
during the League agitation, the court heard an application on be- 
half of the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one ten- 
ants on the Island of Derscy, about a quarter of a mile from the 
main land, in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said 
that the island was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected 
there for over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the 
Land Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair 
rents ? Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get 
off. The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was pos- 
sible to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these 
verses record the exploit :] 

THERE were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing 
sou-sou-west, 
With due responsibility on each official breast, 
To the lonely ivsle of Dersey they travelled with intent 
To investigate and regulate each pining tenant's rent. 
Oh, Moses ! how the tempest blew adown the channel 

wild. 
It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child. 
Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal 

tact. 
For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the 

Act. 



76 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

They felt, did those commissioners, such physical de- 
faults 
As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts, 
And not upon the future were their aspirations cast, 
They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the 

past. 
The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, 

and fluke, 
Had never witnessed so much bait before without a 

hook, 
They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact 
That their unexpected dejeuner was owing to the Act. 

They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled 
seas, 

There was something quite seditious in the waves and 
in the breeze. 

And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid 
earth once more. 

They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey's bar- 
ren shore, 

And they couldn't relish joyfully the wild delirious 
sport 

That awaited but their presence in the Land Commis- 
sion Court ; 

They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked 

The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act. 

They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circum- 
spect than gay 
While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day, 



AN HUSH CRAZY-QUILT. 77 

Although alternate intervals were taken to allow 

Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow. 

That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to con- 
ceal 

A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal ; 

And when they sought their couches, with their consti- 
tutions racked, 

They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the 
Act. 



CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY. 

SO, you're goin' out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue ! 
An' we'll niver see your faytures any more, 
Millia murther ! what in thunder shall we do 

Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore ? 
All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin' 

An' existence will become a dreary void ; 
Ochone an' ullagone ! we must vainly sigh an' groan ; 
Philalu ! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd ! 

No more at midnight's melancholy stroke 

Shall we revel in our customary fun 
Of scaring all the humble women folk 

Fn sarchin' for the shadow of a gun. 
There's an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace 
an' quiet. 

An' their slumbers niver more will be annoyed ; 
We're dejected an' neglected, an' we cannot be ex- 
pected 

To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd I 



78 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

No more cartridges of buckshot we desire, 

'Tis a burden whin we're not allowed to use it, 
An' our batons may be thrown into the fire — 

We may see a peasant's head an' dar not bruise it, 
The girls may take to coortin' an' the boys resume their 
spoortin', 

An' life by common people be enjoyed, 
In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they've sint 

That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd ! 

Misther Healy, you have always been unkind. 

But we didn't think you positively cruel 
Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone's mind, 

And made him sind away our darlin' jewel. 
Our feelins are diminted an' our souls are discontinted, 

Troth ! we're altogether ruined an' destroyed, 
We're wailin' an' w^e're quailin' and we're failin' since 
the sailin' 

Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd ! 



CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX. 

(a cotter's re very on the emigration clause of the 

LAND act.) 

I've been towld there's a chance in the distance. 

For struggling poor sowls like myself. 
To brighten our dreary existence. 

An' even to gather some pelf, 
In a land where the soil is but waitin' 

The wooin' of shovels an' picks 
That we'll take whin we're all emigratin' 

To fortune by Clause Twenty-six. 



AN IKISH CKAZY-QLILT. 79 

It's hard and it's sad to be hurried 

Away from the strings of my life — 
From the spot where my mother lies buried, 

The place where I coorted my wife. 
Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you. 

My conscience remorsefully pricks — 
I can't tell if to lave or to take you, 

Bewilderin' Clause Twenty-six. 

For it's rather too bitther my fate is, 

When my luck like a stranger goes by. 
When blight settles down on the praties, 

An* the cow that I trusted turns dry ; 
Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel. 

An', crouched o'er a handful of sticks, 
I curse you, misfortune so cruel. 

An' pray for you. Clause Twenty-six. 

Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in, 

Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath ; 
Whin the hens are teetotal at layin'. 

An' the pig is as thin as a lath, 
Whin the childer are pinin' an' ailin'. 

An' losin' their mirth an' their tricks — 
Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin' 

That's chartered by Clause Twenty-six. 

And often at night I've a notion. 

Whilst hungry they're lyin' in bed, 
In that plintiful land o'er the ocean 

They wouldn't be cryin' for bread ; 



80 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

They might even an odd pat of butther 
Along with their stirabout mix ; 

Oh, my heart is too full for to utter 

Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six. 

To see the health-roses assimble 

On the cheeks of ray boys, an' the curls 
Once again in the bright mornin' trimble 

With the innocent laugh of my girls ; 
An' to feel that herself would be aisy, 

Nor frettin' at trouble or fix. 
Mavrone ! but I'm mighty nigh crazy 

Considerin' Clause Twenty-six. 



JENKINS, M. P. 

Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen's came o'er 

To address the electors he'd soothered before. 

But he found in their feelings toward him a change, 

Manifested in w^ays both alarming and strange ; 

He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the 

south 
When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth, 
And the force of its logic 'twas plain he could see, 
For "your argument's striking," said Jenkins, M. P. 

Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate ; 
Says Jenkins, " Your animal spirits are great." 
A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter ; 
" I'd rather," he murmured, " not speak of that matter." 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 8l 

They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright, 
"The subject 's appearing in quite a new light." 
He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee, 
"For unity's strength," argued Jenkins, M. P. 

But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond ; 
He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond. 
And as it was freezing it needn't be told 
That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold. 
And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind — 
Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind. 
And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn't be, 
" I won't dwell on these points," muttered Jenkins, M. P. 

He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar, 

Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar. 

"Sweet creatures," quoth he, with a satisfied grin, 

"Their charity sha'n't cover much of my sin." 

All bruises and scratches he sought the first train ; 

"I leave you, electors," he whispered, "with pain. 

'Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree ; 

I'll express them elsewhere," shouted Jenkins, M. P. 



THADY MALONE. 

HURRAH for our tight little, bright little nation. 
The earth's brightest jewel, the gem of the say ; 
The garden of Europe, the flower of creation, 

Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay. 
Were once we united 
Our wrongs should be righted 



82 AN IRISH CRAZY QUILT. 

And ours be the brightest of emerald isles, 

But still some intraygur, 

Or bastely rena^^ger, 
Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles. 

Yet, no matter, we've planned 

A divarsion so grand 
That we'll soon have the land altogether our own ; 

And the rogue who'll consent 

To contribute rack rint 
Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone ! 

The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches, 

The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles. 
An' though he was rowlin' in ill-gotten riches. 
The heels of his stockin's were nothin' but holes. 

For his wife wint away 

On the very next day 
With his mother-in-law (though he didn't mind that) , 

An' sisters and cousins 

Departed in dozens, 
Till there wasn't a sowl in the place but the cat. 

Why, sorra a doubt, 

Sure, the fire it wint out 
An' left him in cowld and in darkness to moan, 

Till he felt that the rint 

Had been badly ill-spin t 
That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone ! 

The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges, 
The mangolds an' turnips got frosted an' sour, 

In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges. 
An' the ass wint an' drowned himself out in a shower. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 83 

The spfiiTows, diminted, 

Grew quite discontinted, 
An' wouldn't remain in the cabin's ould tliatch ; 

The pigs tuk to fittin', 

An' hins that were sittin' 
Wint off upon thramp an' deserted the hatch. 

A polis inspector, 

A taxes collector, 
Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone, 

An' there now he's stuck. 

Without hope, grace, or luck, 
Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone ! 



*RORY'S REVERIE. 

Death o' my soul ! the lot is cast, and mine will be 

the hand 
To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner 

of the land, 
To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in 

hate. 
To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor 

man's fate. 
'Tis I am proud that from the crowd 'twas I, and I alone, 
Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own ; 
My faith ! the country side will ring before the mornin' 

light. 
Though little knows rack-rentin' Phil that Kory walks 

to-night ! 

* Rory, or Capt. Moonlight, is the latest cognomen for the Ribbon 
or Whiteboy avenger of laucllord oppression. 



84 AN IRISH CRAZY-QtTlLT. 

How Thade M'Gurk and Redmond Burke across the 

spread! n' say. 
Driven from home for years to roam 'mid strangers far 

away, 
Will shout with glee the day they see their black and 

cruel lot, 
Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my aveng- 

ing shot ! 
An' they must know — the tale will go 'twas I, their 

boyhood's friend, 
That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter 

end. 
Why, when I meet them next they'll shake my arms 

off with delight — 
I'm longin' for the hour of gloom when Rory walks 

to-night ! 

Mary's asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe 
and sound, — 

("Heaven," said I? Well, that's wrong; 'tis Hell is 
surging hotly round), — 

And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen's face 

Seems smiling like an angel's through the darkness of 
the place. 

She kissed me ere she sank to rest — I'd think it sin 
just now 

To press my burnin' lips again upon her childish brow ; 

Perhaps she'd dream about my scheme, and after shun 
my sight — 

I mustn't think of this — No ! no ! for Rory walks to- 
night ! 



AN IRISH CllAZY-QUlLT. 85 

Where's that ould gun? But softly, so; I'd better 

make no noise, 
I wouldn't like the wife to know I'd dealings in such toys. 
The barrel's rather rusty : it's been in the thatch too 

long — 
Musha ! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger's 

strong. 
And just to think ! with this ould thing you lie behind 

a ditch, 
When there's silence all around you, an' the night is 

dark as pitch. 
An' your landlord comes up whistlin', an' you spot his 

shirt-front white, 
An' his tune is changed immediately to " Kory walks 

to-night ! " 

And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or 

mine ; 
If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood 

w^ould pine ; 
My wife might even bless the hand by which his end 

was wrought ; 
My child — but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by 

such a thought ! 
She prayed for me at bedtime ; sure I stood beside her 

when 
She asked God's blessing on me, and I dar' not say Amen : 
Amen to such a prayer as that ! 'Twould be a curse, a 

blight. 
To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to- 
night ! 



S6 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had 

ever sneer 
For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher 

fear ; 
I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man's 

stern part, 
No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his 

heart ! 
I'm shakin' like an aspen — Faugh! I can't afford to 

spend 
My time in trembling, when I'm due down at the 

boreen's end — 
What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this 

sweet mornin's light, 
I'm better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last 

night. 



A DOUBLE SURPRISE. 
I. 

GALLAGHER'S GOOSE. 



CONSTABLE Tom Gallagher, in December, 1880, 
was in charge of the Bally blank Royal Irish Con- 
stabulary Barracks. A topographist might fail to dis- 
cover Ballyblank on any Ordnance map of Ireland, 
but Constable Gallagher's prototypes abound in every 
county of the island. Ho was tall, straight, stiff, red- 
complexioned, sandy-bearded, self-important, and im- 
bued with that solemn sense of duty to Queen and 
Constitution which has deprived the Irish constabulary 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 87 

of all the ordinary feelings of weak humanity. He 
would bayonet with equally grim satisfaction a riotous 
peasant, a green-ribbon-bedecked maid or matron, or 
a recalcitrant pig which proved contrary at a rent 
seizure. Where he was born, who were his parents, 
what had been his history before he was evolved from 
the depot in Phoenix Park, Dublin, a full-blown sub in 
dark-green tunic, with prominent chest and prying- 
eyes, that rested suspiciously and lingered long on 
every unaccustomed object not familiar to his code of 
instructions and mode of training — these were myste- 
ries known only to himself, and possibly to the 
Director-General. The physiognomists of the quiet 
village of Bally blank, a few of his own limited com- 
mand, and a graceless scamp of a medical student, one 
Harry McCarthy, home for the holidays from the dis- 
secting rooms of the metropolis, professed to trace a 
strikino^ resemblance between the somewhat rus^ored 
contour of his countenance and that of the one man in 
the parish who disputed unpopularity with him — 
George Macgrabb, J. P., the agent of Lord Clonboy, 
the scourge of the district, the terror of its toilers, 
and the bugaboo of all the little children for miles 
around. 

Certain it was, that, whether any physical affinities 
marked the two despots of the country side or not, 
their mental and moral — or immoral — characteristics 
had drawn them closely together. It was on the 
recommendation of Macgrabb, J. P., that Gallagher 
had been appointed to the command of that station. 
It was on the report of Macgrabb, J. P., that the 



^8 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

chief secretary replied in the English Commons to a 
question about an excessive outburst of loyalty on the 
part of the constable, which had led that ardent enthu- 
siast in the cause of law and order to direct a fusillade 
upon a crowd of little boy musicians, who were sup- 
posed to be opposing both by singing the chorus of 
" God Save Ireland." The sapient secretary declared 
that the lives of the police were threatened, and the 
English members cheered the heroism of the constabu- 
lary whose lacerating buckshot had scattered the tod- 
dling crowd. Above and beyond all, this December, 
Macgrabb had shown, not only his magisterial approval 
of the constable as an official, but his interest in him 
as a man, by a kindly present. In the beginning of 
the month he had sent to Gallagher a goose. 

"You are among strangers. Constable," he said; 
" and the unfortunate feeling of disloyalty which per- 
vades this county might reduce you to rougher fare 
than would be agreeable at the festive Christmas time. 
Accept this goose as a token of my good-will. Fatten 
it, and invite your comrades to partake of the hos- 
pitable cheer it may afford." 

Now, whether the early associations of that goose 
with the stingy and miserly household of the agent had 
accustomed it to a peculiar dietary, or that its depraved 
appetite was inherent, I cannot say, but the gastro- 
nomical horrors recorded of it during Gallagher's cus- 
todianship are preserved among the most glowing 
traditions of the force. He tried to fatten it, as per 
invoice, so to speak. He expended all the fervor of a 
constable's first love on it. He wrote to the editors of 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 89 

half-a-dozen agricultural papers for information as to 
the best kind of food to make his goose a sufficiently 
adipose victim for the sacrificial altar. But the per- 
versity of that web-footed cackler was almost miracu- 
lous. The compiler of farm-yard items in the Dublin 
Farmer's Gazette recommended boiled Indian meal. 
The intelligent constable boiled the grain with his own 
loyal hands, and laid down a saucerful before his white- 
winged Christmas donation. It spurned the Indian 
meal, and devoured the saucer. The constable had to 
retire and read the Riot Act to himself before he could 
recover from this outrage to his judgment. 

The assistant editor who lets himself loose on poultry 
in the Barndoor Chronicle gave an elaborate recipe, 
which he warranted to convert Gallagher's shadowy 
anatomy of legs and feathers into a pudgy monster of 
edible delicacy inside a week or so. The belted con- 
stabulary knight spent half a day mixing the recipe 
and stirring it in a canteen kettle. He laid it tenderly 
before the ao-ent's o^oose. The bird sailed into the 
kettle, and actually gorged the spout before peace was 
restored in Warsaw. But why continue? Every man 
in the barracks tried medicinal and culinary experi- 
ments upon Gallagher's goose, but it refused to be 
fattened. It spent its leisure time in masticating 
broken bottles, half-bricks, nails, old shoes, copies of 
the official Gazette, tunic buttons, bayonet sheaths — 
anything, everything, except flesh-forming food. It 
exhibited a remarkable appetite for official documents. 
Private circulars from Col. Hillier, secret instructions 
from George Bolton, search-warrants, copies of infoi- 



90 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 

mation, it swallowed with an avidity that rendered its 
general abstinence all the more conspicuous. 

I have devoted so much introduction to Gallao'her's 
goose because a knowledge of the physical and psycho- 
logical eccentricities of that wonderful fowl, and a due 
appreciation of its literary tastes, will be necessary to 
the proper understanding of the memorable events that 
transpired daring the Christmas week of 1880 at Bally- 
blank. 

II. 

A PLOT, AND ITS EXECUTION. 

The hates, the fears, and the respects of Agent Mac- 
grabb and Constable Gallagher extended to precisely 
the sa^me two individuals in Bally blank. They both 
hated the medical student, Harry McCarth}^ before 
alluded to, and they both feared and consequently 
respected Pat McCarthy, tenant farmer, and father of 
that unutterable scapegrace. Both, too, hated Harry 
for the same reason. He was irreclaimably, obtusely, 
blindly, madly irreverent of the mighty forces that 
prevail in Ireland. He never doffed his hat to the 
agent, majestic representative of property and pro- 
priety ; he smiled at the constable, personification of 
British justice and empire, and had actualh' laughed at 
the constabulary joint-stock enterprise in goose fatten- 
ing. Then, he was popular, and your little village 
tyrant hates no one more bitterly than the man who is 
loved by the oppressed. Finally, his popularity was 
due in a great measure to his powers of mimicry, and 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 91 

the fact that Macgral^b and Galhigher were ever the 
twin objects of his talent in that direction. At wed- 
dings and patterns, wakes and fairs, he had made 
people roar again and again with his reproductions of 
the peeler's parade stride and the magistrate's judicial 
frown. It would be hard to say which had the greatest 
abhorrence to free-and-easy Harry. The agent would 
have gloried in burying him under a pyramid of eject- 
ment writs ; the constable would have sacrificed a 
stripe for the privilege of emptying a company's charge 
of buckshot into his obnoxious figure. The disap- 
pointment at finding no opportunity to either annoy or 
hurt him turned Macgrabb blue and Gallagher yellow 
whenever they encountered Harry's joyous counte- 
nance. 

As mentioned, the worthy couple both respected and 
feared Harry's father. The policeman respected him 
because he was the one man in the parish (outside his 
reckless son) who did not give a traneen for either the 
agent Macgrabb or the agent's master. Lord Clonboy. 
He feared the sturdy farmer, too, from some indefin- 
able sensation that he could not account for. The 
reasons of the agent's fear and respect were of a two- 
fold character. In the first place, Pat McCarthy held 
a lease ; and in the second, he had a daughter. When 
at the close of a gale Macgrabb could put a ten per 
cent, screw on the tenants for Lord Clonboy's Parisian 
dissipation, and a five per cent, twist for his own less 
expensive frolics in Dublin, McCarthy could not only 
pay him a rent, guarded by his lease, one-half w4iat all 
the surrounding tenants had to contribute, but he 



92 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

could and did express his opinion of the rack-renting 
proclivities of the rural Nero in Janguage whose em- 
phasis was more marked than its elegance. It had 
been the life-lona: dream of the assent to break that 
lease, and twice had he approached within measurable 
distance of doing so. Once, when the expenses of 
Harry's collegiate education had left the old man short 
of money, and he had begged for a few weeks' grace. 
Again, just a year before, when the universal foilure of 
the crops should in all human probability have left 
McCarthy nearly bankrupt. But, somehow, the farmer 
weathered his difficulties, and escaped the penal clause 
of the lease, which rendered the whole document void 
if one gale fell in arrears. 

I have mentioned a second reason why Macgrabb 
respected McCarthy. This reason. Miss Ellen Mc- 
Carthy, was a fair and remarkably excusable one. 
Why a shrivelled atomy like the agent should feel 
drawn to a buxom, frolicsome, blue-eyed Irish girl, 
whose generous sympathies were the opposite of his 
sordid nature, whose merry laugh was the antithesis of 
his diabolical grin, who cordially loathed and despised 
every bone in his body and every constituent element 
of his soul, I know not ; but the fact remained that 
Macgrabb doated upon McCarthy's daughter with a 
devotion so utterly antagonistic to his ordinary selfish- 
ness that he couldn't quite understand it himself. 

It led him to a proposal of marriage, whose conse- 
quences were singularly disagreeable both to his magis- 
terial dignity and his physical susceptil)ilities. Miss 
McCarthy laughed at and ran away from him, and 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 03 

Harry McCarthy, to whom she rehited the joke, came 
into the parlor, and with a vehemence that reflected 
credit upon his sincerity, and a knowledge of sore 
spots that spoke well for his diligence at surgical 
studies, kicked the J. P. out of the door, down the 
steps, across a grass plot, and out into the high 
road. 

It was the day after this occurrence that Macgrabb 
presented the goose of destiny to Gallagher. A week 
subsequently the magistrate and the peeler were closeted 
in the former's private office. 

"Here is the search-warrant, Tom," observed Mac- 
grabb, laying his hand familiarly on the constable's 
arm. "I trust to you to see that no paper escapes 
you. If I get that last rent receipt into my hands 
I'll squelch McCarthy as if a mountain had fallen on 
him." 

"It's a risk," said the policeman, hesitatingly. 

"What risk? Information has been sworn that Mc- 
Carthy's son has been engaged in treasonable con- 
spiracy, and that arms and illegal documents are in the 
father's house. On that information I issue a warrant, 
and you execute it. It's your duty to seize all docu- 
ments — you're not supposed to have time to read 
every letter you come across. If you don't nab that 
rent receipt — you'll know it — it's on blue, thick 
paper — what harm's done ? Thank God ! there^s law 
in the country, and police authorities can search these 
blackguards' dens for fun, if for nothing else, as often 
as they like. If you do nip the receipt, there's £50 
down for you, and the chance, Tom — think of that, my 



94 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

boy — the chance of having the pleasure of assistmg 
in turning the whole McCarthy brood out, and paying 
them off for many an old score. Why, at the school 
party last night Harry gave what he called a character 
sketch. What do you think it was? A representation 
of an Irish constable, and voice, legs, gesture, were 
all in imitation of you. The parish priest laughed till 
the tears rolled down his cheeks, and all the boys and 
girls yelled with delight. Have you any spirit, man 
alive, to put up with such insults? " 

"Give me the warrant," growled Gallagher. "I 
suppose the National papers and the priest, too, for 
that matter, would call it stealing to take a rent receipt 
when we're only looking for Fenian proclamations or 
copies of the Irish Worlds but I'll chance to get even 
with that jackeen, even if I lose my stripes." 

On the night of Dec. 6, just as the McCarthys were 
retiring to rest, a loud knocking outside disarranged 
their programme of repose. Before the summons 
could be responded to, the door was rudely burst open, 
and Constable Gallagher, followed by half a dozen 
armed men, rushed in. 

?s "Blow the brains out of any one that budges a foot 
or stirs a hand ! " he yelled. "Mr. McCarthy, in the 
name of the Queen and by varchue of my oath — I 
mane this sarch-warrant — I demand any arms, ammu- 
nition, traysonable papers, or documents of any kind 
delivered up to me." 

McCarthy was surprised, his wife somewhat fright- 
ened, but Harry, true to his character, tossed a bundle 
of medical works on the table and cried, "Arrah ! Ser- 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 95 

geant dear, just give us your candid opinion of some 
of these anatomical sketches. What a beautiful skele- 
ton you would make, yourself! Really, I would feel a 
pleasure in dissecting you. You have such a lot of 
bones about you that seem out of place." 

The constable paid no heed to this badinage, but 
with a sign to his followers proceeded to ransack the 
house. Every paper, envelope, or scrap of writing 
was seized, despite the indignant protests of McCarthy, 
and the merciless jeering of the young student. 

On leaving, Gallagher grunted, " We will examine 
these in the barracks. If there's nothing traysonable 
in them, you'll get them back. If there is, why, law's 
law, and you had better look out." 

That night, in the privacy of his own particular 
room, the constable sat down to a perusal of the 
McCarthy documents. But the excitement of the 
search, and sundry non-oflScial stimulants to duty that 
he had indulged in, had made him heavy and sleepy. 
Leaving the papers spread on the table, he stretched 
his angular limbs on a bench, and was soon snoring in 
cadenzas which sounded like intermittent file-firing. 
He was awakened by a noise at the window. It was 
daylight. The window was open, and perched upon the 
sill with a long slip of blue paper in its beak, was the 
constable's attenuated goose. A glance at the table 
showed that the omnivorous cackler had been tasting 
the flavor of the various papers strewn thereon. Gal- 
lagher rushed forward to seize the predatory monster, 
but with a peculiar chuckle of derision it flew from the 
window and disappeared from view. 



96 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

III. 

A BATCH OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

About noon the constable received the following 
note : — 

Sir, — Among the papers you so unwarrantably 
seized in your grossly illegal search at my house last 
night was a receipt for £24, being the amount of a 
half-year's rent paid Sept. 15 to George Macgrabb. If 
it be not immediately returned, I shall at once take 
legal proceedings for its recovery, and if possible for 
your punishment. Yours, etc., Patrick McCarthy. 

The constable sat down and wrote two notes. The 
first ran : — 

Mr. McCarthy : 

Sir, — I know nothing about any rent receipt. If 
you'll come to the barracks you will get all your papers 
back, except a few suspicious documents I have felt it 
my duty to forward to Dublin Castle. 

Yours, Thomas Gallagher, 

Constable, R. I. O. 

The second note was less short, but more mysteri- 
ous : — 

Mr. Macgrabb : 

Respected Sir, ■ — That infernal goose has got it. I 
saw it flying out of my window with one end of it in 
its mouth this morning. Anything that goose takes a 
fancy to swallow is done for. It has one of my old 
boots and a copy of the Constabulary Manual in its 
stomach already, so you needn't be afraid that it won't 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 97 

digest a piece of blue paper. I enclose you Pat 
McCarthy's note. I'll kill the goose, if you like to 
make sure. Your obedient and respectful 

Thomas Gallagher. 

The letter-box at Ballyblank that night contained 
these two missives from Macgrabb : — 

The Lodge, Dec. 7, 1880. 

My dear Mr. McCarthy , — ■ I find on looking over 
the office books that you are behind with your last 
half-year's rent, due Sej)t. 15. His lordship, as you 
are aware, is not at all pleased with his father's action 
in granting you the lease under which you now hold, 
and will certainly submit to no infringement of its 
clauses. I would request, therefore, immediate pay- 
ment of the amount due. Of course you know the 
consequences of delay. 

Faithfully yours, George Macgrabb. 

Dear Oonstable^ — Let the goose live. By Jingo, 
I've a mind to drop over on Christmas day and test its 
stuffing. George. 

IV. 

the constable's CHRISTMAS COLLATION. 

To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned 
no answer to his note, and to the surprise of the police- 
man the last addition to its literary feasts appeared to 
have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird, for it van- 
ished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen 
no more for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious 
disappearance somewhat annoyed, even if it did not 



98 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was a bare pos- 
sibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might 
have killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discov- 
ering the lost receipt among the other curiosities ab- 
sorbed into its digestive interior. But when a week 
passed, and nothing was heard of either the missing 
dinner which the Bailyblank constabulary had antici- 
pated blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the 
cerulean document obtained by sti'atagem and lost by 
accident, the worthy pair began to breathe more freely. 
Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the 
barracks of its treasure. 

On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy 
that at the fortnightly sessions to be held at Bailyblank 
on the first Tuesday after Christmas, it was the inten- 
tion of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent to Lord 
Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of 
ejectment against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears 
of rent and costs, and the said Patrick McCarthy was 
required to attend and show cause, if any, why such 
decree should not be granted. Still no response from 
the obnoxious tenant. 

On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the 
barracks. 

"Constable," said he, "I expect I shall require your 
assistance in a day or two. I'll get the ejectment to- 
morrow. I haven't heard a word from McCarthy. I 
suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt 
was stolen during your search. It will be useless. 
Those copies of the Irish World found in his desk 
have turned every magistrate on the bench against 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 99 

him. They won't believe him on a million oaths. We 
landlords stick to each other. I'll get the decree, and 
by G — d, I'll put it in execution in twenty-four hours 
unless Miss Nelly says she'll be Mrs. MacG. and Mas- 
ter Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have 
every available man ready. McCarthy's a popular 
man with the other rapscallions of tenants, and they 
might show fight. We'll shoot them down, if they do, 
the dogs. I'll telegraph to the county town for more 
men." 

" It won't be necessary," growled Gallagher, showing 
his teeth like a vicious cat. " They haven't forgotten 
Malone's eviction. By Jupiter, didn't we scatter the 
women that day ! Killed one. She had twenty grains 
of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my 
life. They made a fuss about it, of course. What 
good did it do the fools ? Did it save young Dermody 
when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out ? 
He'll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives 
long enough. Then look how the crowds gathered 
when we executed the writ against O'Brien. Lord ! 
how we peppered them. Do you mind — " 

The brutal reminiscences over which both the crow- 
bar heroes sat gloating and smacking their lips were 
interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a hamper and 
a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. 
To the hamper was attached a card : — 

"A Christmas Box — From Harry McCarthy." 

" Don't touch it ! Take it away ! It's dynamite ! " 
screamed the magistrate, with blue lips and pallid fea- 
tures. But at that moment there came from the box a 



100 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

" Quack ! Quack ! " so loud, so unmistakable, that both 
Gallagher and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, 
" The goose ! Great Heavens, the goose ! " 

They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and 
there, sure enough, as scraggy, as bony, as void of 
everything but skin and feathers as ever, was Mac- 
grabb's Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of 
the law. 

The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. 
It was some time before he could read its contents : — 

My poor Gallagher, — I do not wish to deprive you 
of your Christmas repast. The thought of your mis- 
ery, if doomed to a cold collation of l3read and cheese, 
has overcome my resentment at your last visit. But I 
would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It has 
been a most mteresting visitor to me. It is not so 
much its exploring turn of mind that I admire — though 
certainly it is the most inquisitive goose I ever saw. 
During its stay with me I confined its tours of investi- 
gation indoors. It would have been well for you to 
have done the same. If 3^ou had kept its intellect em- 
ployed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited 
its digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, 
paper collars, and ink-bottles, as I have done, 3'ou would 
possibly be happier to-day. Its thirst for knowledge 
is positively alarming. I discovered that when I found 
it making a meal off one of my most valued surgical 
books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it has 
at tills moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a 
pair of blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of 
carpet and hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think 
it would have been better for you to have sacrificed a 
linen-draper's shop, and kept your goose at home. 
When it came round our farm on a voyage of discovery 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 101 

with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the 
mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect 
or a treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing 
the document, which it proposed studying, I have no 
doubt, when it could spare time from its topographical 
surveys. I shall have the pleasure of exhi!)iting the 
autograph in which the animal took such an absorliing 
interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its 
original author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you 
feel no further curiosity in the goose, perhaps he might 
be inclined to preserve it in his ancestral halls. If he 
wrote a history of its connection with a strategic stroke 
of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal would 
be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and 
dependants, as representative of one of which classes, 
perhaps both, I tender you my profound sympathy, 
and remain. Yours, as ever, 

Harry McCarthy. 

P. S. — I am writing a little farce called "The Peel- 
er's Goose," which will be produced at our society 
rooms shortly. Shall I send you tickets ? 

They were two very sickly men who bade each other 
good day soon after they had mastered the contents of 
this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply for the decree of 
ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the 
whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls 
the incident the greatest double surprise in his experi- 
ence, but admits that he cannot say which was the 
greater surprise — that which he felt when he encoun- 
tered Gallagher's goose, or that which thrilled the 
peeler when he got it back again. 



102 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE. 

BRIGHTLY our swords in the sunlight are gleaming, 
Mountain and valley re-echo our tread ; 
Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming ; 

Firm is each footstep, erect every head. 
Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might, 

Slaves to the stranger no longer we'll be ; 
Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry 
Wakens the nation — Our land shall be free ! 

We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining 

In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar, 
And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining, 

For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar ! 
What though our force be few, each man is tried and true ; 

Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea ; 
On to the contest, then, up with the green again ! 

Death to the tyrant — Our land shall be free ! 

The spirit of Brian is hovering o'er us, 

The shades of our fathers arise from their graves ; 
Swiftly we'll drive the false foemen before us ; 

While we've blood in our veins we will never be 
slaves ! 
Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong, 

But now she rises erect from her knee. 
And, by the God who gave strength to the true and 
brave. 

Death will be ours, or our land shall be free ! 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 103 

England no longer can mock or deride us ; 

Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain ; 
Factions or chieftains no more can divide us ; 

True to the cause we shall ever remain. 
Yes ! to our native land faithful till death we stand ; 

Freedom for Erin our watchword will be ; 
Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside, 

Soldiers, press onward — Our land shall be free ! 



PHILIPSON S PARTY. 

Peter Philipson, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale 
firm of Philipson Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap- 
boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived in Ballymurphy, 
County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the 
express purpose of collecting the rents on his father's 
estate there, which would fall due on the 31st of said 
month, and also of screwing out of the tenants various 
arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had allowed 
to accumulate since the purchase of the property some 
three years previously by the senior Philipson. That 
enterprising candle manufacturer had invested in land 
just as he would in grease — with a view to a divi- 
dend ; and his first action had been to raise the rents 
all round, a business arrangement which the obstinate 
farmers refused to view in anything like the cool, 
matter-of-fact manner in which it was regarded by Old 
Soapsuds, — which was the very irreverend title those 
benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most sol- 
vent merchants of the city of London. The agent, 
Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime of the 
" old stock," who had got along very comfortably with 



104 AN IKISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

the tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad hick at 
the roulette table had forced the last of them to dispose 
of the estate to the highest bidder, the aforementioned 
manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson had 
protested against the increased rents ; he averred posi- 
tively that it would bo impossible to gather them, and, 
to do him justice, he made no effort in that direction, 
cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and calmly 
ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson 
to evict Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the 
deuce generally with the rest of the tenants. 

At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dis- 
missed his easy-going agent and sent his son across, 
armed with plenary powers of eviction, ejectment, and 
all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of 
landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task 
of reducing the entire Irish population to meek sub- 
mission, and wasn't going to be put down by a score 
or two beggarly Cork men, don't you know. Peter 
was smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the 
most determined fellah of any fellah he knew. Why, 
he had been accustomed to deal with rascally workmen 
who were always wanting more wages, and he had 
once sacked fifty — fifty in a batch. The beggars were 
glad to send their wives to beg 'em back. He'd make 
these Irishmen sit up. He'd show 'em what was what. 
They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with 
now. They had Peter Philipson — " no-nonsense 
Peter," as they called him in the city. 

The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary 
residence. He retained the old housekeeper and the 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 105 

cook and the coachman and a stable boy, only bringing 
from London with him his body-servant, one John 
Thomas Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives 
a sad adieu under the evident impression that he was 
a])oiit to face perils and catastrophes of the most 
alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Pe- 
ter's first proceeding was to present various letters of 
introduction to the neighboring landlords and the 
officers of the adjoining garrison ; his next to extend 
to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given 
as a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of 
March, by which time he expected to be in a position 
to tell them that he had brought the recalcitrant occu- 
piers of " his ftither's ground " to their proper senses. 
These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., 
despatched separate missives to each tenant, setting 
forth the amount of his arrears, including the incoming 
gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under penalty 
of immediate law proceedings That task over, Peter 
rested upon his oars, purred contentedly to himself for 
a few days, wrote to his father that he had shaken the 
beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle to the 
Limehonse Chronicle on the proper method of settling 
the Irish difficulty. 

On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by 
a visit from his tenantry in a body. His first impres- 
sion was that they had come to pay up arrears, 
and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely 
expected so soon. On entering the room into which 
his housekeeper had invited the farmers, he changed 
his opinion. They hadn't altogether the look of men 



106 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. 
Most of them retained their head-gear, and one or two 
were actually smoking. To say that Peter was amazed 
at this lack of respect for his presence would be a 
weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, 
startled, indignant, and, indeed, a little frightened, 
into the bargain. Eecovering himself, he asked in a 
voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had 
got round his tongue, " Well, you've come to settle, I 
suppose ? " 

"Yes," replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, ad- 
vancinoj from the rest without removins^ his caubeen. 
"You're right; we want a settlement." 

"Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses," 
said Peter with an ill-disguised sneer. 

Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, "It seems to me 
that you've got the wrong bull by the tail this time," 
at which a broad smile lit up the twenty-odd faces, and 
there were one or two audible guffaws. 

"Wrong bull? Who's talking about bulls? What 
do you mean ? " 

" Well, we're here to bring you to your senses ; not 
to show that we've parted with our own." 

"I — I — " stammered Peter. " Upon my soul, my 
deah fellah, I don't understand you." 

"Well, thin, I'll try to insinse you. You've sint 
us notes askin' for arrears that we don't mane to pay. 
Yer ould father's been thryin' to raise rints on us that's 
too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long as we 
cud, but bad say sons an' poor crops have med even the 
ould rint too heavy; so we've detarmined, every man, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 107 

to offer you a fair rint for this gale, Griffith's valuation, 
divil a ha'penny more, an' if you don't like to take that, 
troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to 
the shilling you'll get, at all, at all." 

Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, f\nd mottled 
by turns, and was nearly ten minutes searching for his 
voice before he found it. When he did get hold of it, he 
hardly recognized the tones as his own. " This is mo — 
mo — monstrous," he ejaculated, "Begone! I shall 
have bailiffs in every cabin in the parish before the 
month's out. I'll evict — I'll — I'll — by Jove! I'll 
— I'll — Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of 
this ! " 

" Oh, we're goin'," responded the spokesman ; " but, 
before we go, I'd like to give you a little bit of advice. 
We med you a fair offer, an' ye've only returned abuse. 
Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott ? Well, begorra, 
before this day-week you'll think Captain Boycott a 
happy man to what you'll be. We're going to do 
the most complete, out-an'-out, thunderin' boycottin' on 
you that ever shook a man out of his breeches. Good 
day, an' good luck to you. I hope your education in 
the fine arts of washin' and cookin', diggin' yer own 
praties an' lightin' yer own fires, blackin' yer own 
boots, an' starchin' yer own shirts, wasn't neglected in 
yer youth, for ye'll need it all, I assure you, on the 
vv^ord of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers 
for the Land League ! " A thundering hurrah shook 
the oaken rafters again and again, as the deputation 
filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the 
nearest chair with a dim conviction surging through 



108 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

his brain that there was something wrong somewhere 
in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane, Lime- 
house, was a far more desirable location for his active 
genius than Ballymurphy, County Cork. 

After half an hour's diversified meditation, Peter de- 
cided that things were not so gloomy, after all. He 
would see his lawyer, and get out the decrees at once. 
As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about 
that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance 
of the tenantry, so how the deuce could he suffer hj 
their refusal to speak or deal with him ? Ha ! ha ! by 
Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his 
revived spirits Peter actually commenced an original 
fandango, but was interrupted in his terpsichorean 
evolutions by the entrance of his man Jones, over 
whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had ftdlen, 
which at once arrested his master's attention and his 
quickstep. 

"Eh? Well? What's up now?" queried Philipson. 

"Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she's 
hup and 'ooked it. The cook, she's bin and gone and 
flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the 'ossler 
they've sloped, an' the 'osses is a 'avin' a jubilee on 
the front lawn. The kitchen fire, it's gone out, and I 
do verily believe there ain't a mossel of coal in the 
'ouse. The butcher, 'e's a ])loomer, 'e is. Blow me 
if that 'ere butcher didn't turn back with the legs o' 
mutton, an' the rounds o' beef, an' the shoulders o' 
lamb as was a bordered for the lay-out to-morrow ; 
and the fowl man, 'e did ditto with the turkeys an' 
chickens, an' the grocer, 'e's another ditto, an' Pve 



AN IKISH CRAZY-QUILT. 109 

come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, 
'onor, an' obey — I mean to brush your clothes an' do 
all the other cetrys of a wally de sham — I didn't bar- 
gain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You 
may be as much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you 
don't lug John Thomas in for Man Friday. Adoo. 
Fare you well. I'm going back to the roast beef of 
hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she 
could see her faithful Jones a wearin' to a skeleton she 
would break her 'art. Good~by, sir." 

Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his 
servitor's disjointed sentences, that injured retainer was 
away, speeding to the nearest railwa}^ station w^ith a 
firm conviction that his life depended on the distance 
he could place before nightfall between himself and 
Ballymurphy. 

A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his 
master that he had spoken only too truly. There was 
not a servant in the house. The fires were all out ; 
the larder w^as very nearly empty ; the nearest provis- 
ion store was four miles off; if he knew how to har- 
ness a horse to the gig he couldn't do it, for, rejoicing 
in their unexpected freedom, his equine possessions 
Avere gaily gambolling in distant pastures ; and Peter 
groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the mor- 
row of his invited guests. Captain Devereux and 
Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev. Jabez 
Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, 
the neighboring squires from half a dozen estates — 
a goodly company of fifteen or sixteen in all, with not 
so much as a scullery maid to attend to their wants, 



no AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a 
couple of loaves to feast their appetites ! 

It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, 
Casabianca on the burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in 
a Kearney convention, a fat alderman in a narrow 
lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in 
the whale's belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary 
contemplating burial in the digestive recesses of a tribe 
of cannibals may afford striking examples of perturba- 
tion of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he would 
gladly change lots with any or all of them. What 
should he do? Would he tie black crape to the front 
knocker, with a card announcing his premature decease ? 
Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where boycot- 
ting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, 
cooks, and housekeepers had feeling hearts within their 
tender bosoms ? Would he poison, hang, shoot, drown, 
or smother himself? 

He didn't do any of these things. He sought out 
Frieze-coat Sullivan. With tears in his eyes he 
besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove the edict 
which had brought desolation to his hearth and afllic- 
tion to his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was 
mighty. He relented. He restored to Peter his satel- 
lite of the saucepan, his janitor of the stable, his legs 
of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The 
party came oflT, after all. Peter preserved his credit as 
a host, but it was 'at the sacrifice of his laurels as a 
land-agent. 

If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy 
depths of a soap-boiler's soul, he has only to drop into 



AN IRISH CKAZV-QUILt. Ill 

the counting-house of Philipson Brothers, in the East end 
of London, and ask the manager his candid opinion of 
the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned 
to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at 
any rate, be firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., 
entertains very strong ideas on the subject. 



THE FELONS OF OUR LAND. 

FILL up once more, we'll drink a toast 
To comrades far away ; 
No nation on the earth can boast 

Of braver hearts than they. 
And though they sleep in dungeons deep, 

Or flee, outlawed and banned. 
We love them yet, we ne'er forget 
The felons of our land ! 

In boyhood's bloom and manhood's pride, 

Foredoomed by alien laws. 
Some on the scaffold proudly died 

For holy Ireland's cause. 
And brothers, say, shall we to-day 

Unmoved like cowards stand. 
While traitors shame and foes defame 

The felons of our land ? 

Some in the convict's dreary cell 

Have found a living tomb, 
And some unseen, unfriended, fell 

Within its silent gloom. 



112 AN IRISH CRAZr-QUILf. 

Yet what care we, although it be 

Trod by a ruflSan band, 
God bless the clay where rest to-day 

The felons of our land ! 

Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown, 

Oh, little do we care, 
A felon's cap's the noblest crown 

An Irish head can wear ! 
And every Gael in Innisfail 

Who scorns the serf's vile brand, 
From Lee to Boyne would gladly join 

The felons of our land ! 



AN OFFICIAL VALUATION. 

THE wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his 
car, 
In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar ; 
And as he contemplated the interminable rain, 
On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much 
pain. 
For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far. 

The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a 

swamp. 
And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) 
damp, 
As he thought of bronchial attacks, 
Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks, 
And the other consequences of his valuating tramp. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 113 

The lawyers had departed from the village with their 

spoil, 
The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked 
the toil 
Of plodding 'mid the mist and fog, 
O'er slimy clay and treacherous bog, 
And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil. 

His tmnbler he replenished and he took another sip, 
And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip, 
His gloomy face relaxed, — indeed, he actually 

laughed ; 
He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the 
draught 
That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip. 

He whispered to the jarvey — "You remember Mur- 
phy's land ; 
Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for 
once to stand ? 
That is, could you perambulate 
Around that gentleman's estate 
In a pair of boots I'll lend you to accomplish my 
demand? 

"You needn't spend a week or so, you needn't spend 

a day. 
But just long enough to gather up some samples of the 
clay. 
Return the muddy boots to me 
Unbrushed, because I wish to be 
Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay." 



Il4 AN IRtSH CRAZY-QUILT. 

That carman took instructions, but they say he took 

no more, 
He didn't take a dozen steps outside the tavern door, 
He simply mopped the boots around 
The dirtiest adjacent ground, 
And returned them to the owner when an hour or so 
was o'er. 

And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent 
Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content. 
Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent. 
Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more 

than sure 
That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor, 
That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per 
cent. 



A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER. 

I'M diminted, — this is awful ; so it is 
My spirit's in low water, an' no wonder ; 
'Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz 

The time I lost my churning through the thunder. 
Mickey Flanagan has been an' paid his rint, 

An' the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary — 
Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint ! — 
Have resolved to boycott him an' little Mary. 

I wouldn't mind the ould man, — not a jot ; 

I always looked upon him as a blaggard. 
Since his language was so disperately hot, 

Once he caught me kissin' Mary in the haggard. 



AN IIUSII CRAZY-QUiLT. 115 

They might pass their resolutions ])y the score 
About him, and I would niver prove contrary, 

But my feelin's are distracted, sad, an' sore 
Whin I'm called upon to boycott little Mary. 

Sure, it's mostly for her sake I go to mass, 

Haifa dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday; 
An' if I have to schorn her whin I pass, 

Troth I'll be a ravin' lunatic on Monday. 
Her beseechin' eyes will follow me all day ; 

They'll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy. 
An' I'll waken in the mornin', bald or gray, — 

Black misfortune ! if I boycott little Mary. 

If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue, 

Earn writs down half a dozen bailiffs' throttles, 
Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo, 

An' live on impty oyster shells an' bottles, 
I would do my best endayvors to obey ; 

But to tear from out my heart that winnin' fairy 
Is beyant me ; so I'll meet my friends an' say, — 

Divil sweep me if I'll boycott little Mary ! 



A COMPLAINT OF COERCION. 

O PEGGY, darlin', listen to my sorrowful lamint, 
And help me to recover from my state of dis- 
contint ; 
There's an end to fun an' sportin' in these black and 

bitther days. 
And we'll have to drop our coortin' by the moon's 
enchanting rays. 



110 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

For there isn't a dacent gossoon, 

By the light of that same silver moon, 

Found out of his bed, 

But will straightway be led 

To a cushion of plank, 

That of feathers is blank. 
An' he won't fall in love with too soon. 

Now it's inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin' in the day. 
With all your male relations or your neighbors in the 

way ; 
Your boy's poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate 

and pant 
Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your 
aunt ; 

An' he'll have to repress his ould taste 
For resting his arm round your waist, 
An' except for a sigh, 
Or a glance of your eye. 
Or an odd little squeeze 
That there's nobody sees. 
His comfort will be of the laste. 

Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was 

on the ground. 
Every night all stiff an' frozen in the boreen I'd be 

found ? 
I didn't care for painful demonstrations in my toes, 
I didn't feel the icicles that beautified my nose ; 
I despised my five miles of a thramp 
In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 117 

For I knew at its ind 
I could always dipind 
That some one I'd find 
Who had sootherings kind, 
To rescue my sperits from damp. 

But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if 1 venture out at all, 
The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an' with ball ; 
And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin' course, 
I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force. 
An' some night I'll be brought in my gore, 
Stritched out on an ould cabin door. 
With six ounces of lead 
Settled inside my head. 
An' my bosom, that's true 
As the saints unto you, 
Disarranged by an ounce or two more. 

Or I might be taken, Peggy, an' before a magisthrate, 
Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin's to state ; 
And it wouldn't suit your character for me to tell the 

truth , 
That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to 
quinch its drooth ; 

So I'd have to tell thunderin' lies. 
And the law has such far-seeing eyes, 
'Twould find thim all out, 
And there isn't a doubt 
Introduced I would be. 
By some dirty J. P., 
To a guit of the Government frieze, 



118 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT, 



O'NEILL'S ADDRESS. 

BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646. 

& ALL ANT sons of Innisfail, 
Ye whose stout hearts never quail, 
Thouojh no oflitterins^ coats of mail 
Their proud throbbings hide ; 
Hark ! yon distant sullen hum ! 
'Tis the rolling of the drum. 
See ! our Saxon foemen come 
In their wrath and pride. 



Meet them, comrades, face to face, 
Meet them as becomes our race, 
Let no shadow of disgrace 

Dim our spotless name. 
Front to front, unshrinking, stand. 
Fire each heart and nerve each hand, 
Strike for God and fatherland. 

Liberty and fame ! 

Kinsmen, they are still the same 
As when, centuries past, they came 
To our shores, and blood and flame 

Followed in their track ; 
By the still uncancelled debt 
We were cowards to forget, 
By the wrongs we suffer yet. 

Drive them headlong back ! 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 119 

As when angry billows leap, 

Like proud chargers from the deep, 

Heaven's more mighty tempests sweep 

All their wrath to spray, 
So their glinting waves of steel 
Erin's whirlwind charge shall feel 
Till their serried columns reel, 

Scattered in dismay. 

Strike, that Ireland's sons may be 
Still unconquered, proud, and free ; 
Strike, and fear not, — victory 

Waits on every blow ; 
Strike, that we may never roam 
Exiles o'er the ocean's foam ; 
Strike together, and strike home, 

Vengeance on the foe ! 



THE FENIAN'S DREAM. 

CHRISTMAS, 1867. 

THROUGH London's dull and murky air 
The merry Christmas bells 
Flung out, in cadence rich and rare. 

Their sonorous throbs and swells. 
To the half-slumbering town they spoke 

Of peace and God's good-will, 
And seemed to chase with pealing stroke 

The fiends of hate and ill ; 
But, ah, how cruelly they broke 

Around dark Pentonville ! 



120 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

There, 'twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams, 

Half timid, forced their way, 
And fell in slender, silvery streams, 

Down where the convict lay. 
They glanced a moment round the place, 

Cold, comfortless, and bare, 
Then, in a pitying embrace. 

Like angel spirits there. 
Caressed the careworn, pallid face, 

So wan, and yet so fair. 

They seemed to whisper softly while 

Around his head they strayed, 
For o'er the pale, thin lips a smile. 

Half joy, half anguish, played ; 
As if the tender moonbeams sought 

Bright tales of hope to tell, 
And the day memories, bitter, wrought 

Such fancies to dispel ; 
And so his two dream guardians fought 

Within his lonely cell. 

His dream was of the loved old land 

He never could forget — 
The dungeon's gloom, the convict's brand, 

Had not subdued it yet ; 
The land of legend and of lay, 

Of mountain, stream, and lake. 
Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay, 

Of forest, glen, and brake, 
Where highland sprite and lowland fay 

A home forever make. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



121 



The land whose children toil and bleed, 

And drudge and starve in vain, 
For where the peasant sows the seed, 

A stranger reaps the grain. 
The Isle of Saints — where knaves and spies 

Flourish and thrive apace ; 
Where fortune must be wooed by lies, 

Dishonor, and disgrace ; 
The true man from such saintdoni flies, 

And cattle take his place. 

Land of the green, and of the gray ! 

For workhouse, tomb, and jail 
Are landmarks on thy soil to-day, 

And answer, Innisfail, 
Tell us which tint thou seest most. 

The old one or the new ? 
The green of which our poets boast, 

Or the more sombre hue ? 
Few w^ear the green : a countless host 

Have donned the gray for you. 

Island of verdure, glorious land ! 

So rich in fertile plains, 
Where Nature gives with bounteous hand. 

Yet famine ever reigns ; 
Where through the mellow ripening corn 

The balmiest zephyrs sigh, 
Where brighter seems each glowing morn, 

More radiant each sky : 
Where 'tis misfortune to be born, 

And happiness to die. 



122 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 

Poor dreaming boy ! he softly smiled 

To think he played once more, 
A happy, bright, and thoughtless child. 

Beside the cabin door — 
The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where, 

Upon his mother's knee, 
He first had learned to lisp a prayer 

For Irehmd's liberty, 
And ever pregnant seemed the air 

With joyous melody. 

His fancy changed : the youthful face 

In sternness now was set, 
His woes had left no coward trace 

Upon his spirit yet ; 
His cold, thin lips were tightly press'd, 

His cheeks were all aglow ; 
Expanded seemed the hollow chest, 

His brows contract, as though 
Disturbed and broken was his rest 

By some nocturnal foe. 

He dreamt that in his native land, 

Away from this bleak jail. 
He stood within a meadow grand, 

A shamrock-spangled vale. 
Above the scene the sun-rays bright 

In glittering grandeur beamed. 
Around him in their golden light 

Ten thousand bayonets beamed. 
And o'er his head, oh, glorious sight ! 

Green Erin's banner streamed. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 123 

From town and village, hill and glen, 

With clamorous fife and drum, 
From mountain brake and lowland fen 

The mustering legions come ; 
The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown, 

Has brought his dinted blade ; 
While quickly from the neighboring town 

Flock in the sons of trade ; 
The farmer flings his good spade down, 

And joins the dense brigade. 

The fiery Northmen, in whose veins 

Still flows the blood of those 
Who on a hundred battle-plains 

Have conquered Erin's foes — 
The brave descendants of O'Neill, 

A stern and fearless band, 
A living wall of sparkling steel 

Beneath the old flag stand. 
And many a Saxon foe shall feel 

Tyrconnell's vengeful hand. 

With Ulster's columns, side by side. 

Are Munster's squadrons massed, 
Like tigers into line they glide, 

So noiselessly and fast ; 
Ah ! crimsoned soon will be the green 

They bear into the fray. 
Through England's host their sabres keen 

Shall carve a corse-strewn way. 
And Limerick and Skibbereen 

Be well avenged to-day. 



124 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Proud Leinster, all your chivalry 

To arms electric spring ; 
High 'mid the battle's revelry 

Your stirring shout shall ring ; 
And many a foe this day shall rue 

Your fierce, impetuous might ; 
The scenes that gallant Wexford knew 

Shall be reversed ere night ; 
The epitaph to Emmet due 

Your gleaming swords shall write. 

O'Connor's soul, grim Connaught, lives 

Within your ranks this hour ; 
Before the strength your hatred gives 

Well may the despot cower. 
Think of your long, black night of tears. 

And say, can you forget 
The tyrant's scorn, his jibes and jeers — 

That huge, uncancelled debt. 
The wrongs of thrice two hundred years 

That scourge your province yet ? 

Hark to that distant rumbling sound ! 

See, yonder come the foe ; 
Now be our arms with victory crowned, 

The foieign scum laid low. 
The stillness and the calm are o'er, 

And many a sulphurous cloud, 
Betinged with flame and dripping gore. 

Shall form a battle-shroud 
For those whose tongues may swell no more 

The nation's slogan loud. 



AN iRISIt CHA/:V-QUILT. 125 

Like hostile torrents armies clash, 

And steel now crosses steel, 
The lurid flames incessant flash. 

And volleyed thunders peal ; 
But backward reel the alien ranks, 

With one exultant cry, 
Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks, 

Not vainly will ye die ; 
Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks, 

The craven red-coats fly ! 

'Tis o'er ; the victory is ours ; 

And though yon darling flag 
May float above our castle towers 

A torn and tattered rag, 
'Tis still our own ; and every fold 

Preserved us from the strife. 
Each shred around that flag-staff rolled 

Unpierced by ball or knife. 
Is worth a mine of virgin gold — 

Aye, worth a hero's life. 

From slimy cell and dungeon damp 

Bring forth our prisoned men ; 
Gather, ye braves, from every camp. 

To cheer them home again. 
What though to-day they did not bleed 

To share our victory. 
We reap the harvest of their seed, 

So victors still they be ; 
From faction they our people freed, 

And now our land is free. 



126 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake 

The city with your strain ; 
Your loudest music cannot break 

The felon's rest again. 
His dream is o'er ; the moonbeams gone, 

Nor left a single ray, 
For all that but this moment shone 

Retreat before the day ; 
But that last, loving, pitying one 

Has borne his soul away. 

" Died in his cell " — and nothing more ; 

'Twas all his comrades heard ; 
But of the dream he had before 

He died, — oh, not a word ! 
They found him on the coarse straw bed, 

A smile upon his face. 
And, "Number 28 found dead," 

Was whispered round the place ; 
And the jail doctor shook his head 

And wondered at the case ! 



THE SPEAKER'S COMPLArNT,* 

AN earthquake is scarcely a joyous event, 
'Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple. 
There is not much fun in recovering rent 

Where the Land League has hold of the people ; 

* During the period of Irish obstruction in Parliament, the 
Speaker or Chairman of the House of Commons had frequently to 
preside for twenty or twenty-four hours at a stretch, during a de- 
bate, in the course of which the Irish members would raise points 
of order every five minutes or so. 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 127 

But upheaval of earth 

Is good reason for mirth, 
'Tis jolly o'er Connaught's bleak border, 

Compared to a seat 

Where the Commoners meet 
When Mulligan rises to order. 

A touch of the measles, neuralgia's pain, 

Catarrhic attacks are not charming, 
There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain 
That a bad-tempered woman's alarming. 
Should close diagnosis 
Reveal your probocis 
To be of your weakness recorder, 
You might foolishly curse ; 
But it's very much worse 
When Mulligan rises to order. 

The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell, 

A cats' chorus in conference meeting, 
Are music compared to the agonized yell 
Of rage and derision, his greeting; 
You go home to your bed 
With a pain in your head. 
By your pillow stands nightmare a warder ; 
Your sleep is a blight. 
Your comfort takes flight, 
Your breathing is tight, 
You scratch and you bite. 
Or you wake with afi*right 
As you dream through the night 
That Mulligan rises to order ! 



128 AN IHISH CRxVZY-QUlLT. 



ERIN MACHREE (1798). 



THE sun had gone down in a halo of glory, 
And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray 
On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory. 

The brave who had ftdlen for fatherland lay. 
Then close round the fires where the weary were sleep- 

And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping. 
We gathered together in sorrow and weeping 
For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree ! 

From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled. 

Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze ; 
We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower 
rattled, 
And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze. 
Like waves 'gainst a rock on the hirelings before us 
We charged side by side, with the green banner o'er us. 
While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus 
That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree ! 

But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water. 

Ah ! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains ; 
When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of 
slaughter, 
'Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains ! 
Oh ! better be laid with the dead or the dying, 
The wild winds a reciuiem over us sighing. 
Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying 
The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree ! 



AN IRISH CHAZY-QLILT. 129 

Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow 
With slavery's midnight surrounding us fast ; 

Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow — - 
That morning must dawn on our island at last. 

Our hopes are undimmed, e'en in dying we breathe them ; 

Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath thcni 

To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly un- 
sheathe them 
To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree ! 



THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS. 

WHEN Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieuten- 
ancy of Ireland, eight years ago, he did so 
with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret con- 
spiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this 
object, he decided on employing the services of trusty 
Bow Street runners and Scotland Yard spotters in ad- 
dition to the staff of spies regularly attached to the 
castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently 
to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and 
control of the combined detective forces. 

Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard 
attached to the staff of the head inquisitor was that 
famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua Timmins. Tim- 
mins by himself might have been an acquisition to Jen- 
kinson's battalion, but, alas ! Timmins brought with 
him to Dublin his impressionable soul, and he was 
likewise accompanied by his wife, who is fully ac- 
quainted with his possession of the impressionable soul 



130 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition, — 
intensely jealous — the concentrated essence of subli- 
mated jealousy — a Mount Vesuvius, patent torpedo, 
wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun, cyclone-earthquake com- 
bination of suspicion and doubt. 

She would lie awake all night to catch the ejacula- 
tions an occasional nio^htmare mio^ht wrino: from the 
dreaming Timmins ; she would loosen all the buttons 
on his cuifs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a 
renewed tenure from any rival fingers ; she would 
strengthen his constitution every morning by making 
him eat two or three strong onions, in the hope that 
their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in petti- 
coats from sipping the honey ofi" his lips ; and she would 
affix surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat 
and round his coat-coHar as a sort of chevaux-de-frise 
to repel illegal embraces. Of course she Grahamized 
his letters, and when, now and then, the postman's 
rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it 
was quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather 
chilling, spectacle, to witness the pair — he with one 
trousers' leg on the wrong limb and the other thrown 
over his shoulder ; she with her hair in curl-papers, and 
a miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and 
bed-quilts hanging promiscuously about her — career- 
ing down the stairs in a mad steeplechase to that 
winning post, the door. 

Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a con- 
fused mixture of night-dresses, and slippers, and bare 
arms, and loud voices would burst out upon the be- 
wildered postman, and his whole delivery would be 



AN IRISH CIJAZY-QUILT. 131 

snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover 
his breath, the amazing kaleidoscope would disappear 
with a bang, and nothing would remain to remind him 
of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of slum- 
ber which had been caught in the door, or some strange 
article of feminine toilet which had been shed upon the 
front steps. 

Then the government messenger would awake the 
echoes Avith extra professional solos on the knocker 
and improvised overtures on the bell, but he had inva- 
riably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or 
other of the staircase competitors had donned the ha- 
biliments of civilization. The mail Mercury, half an 
hour behind time, would proceed on his route with 
official expressions of opinion not to be found in any 
postal manual. 

Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symp- 
toms of a weakness not phenomenal in her sex. In 
his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad fellow. 
Long before the term " masher " had been incorporated 
into our rich language, Constable Timmins had been a 
masher of the mashiest type. London constables are 
proverbially easy victims to Cupid's darts and cold 
victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible 
martyr to Love's young dream in the entire A division. 

He didn't confine his amorous proclivities to cooks 
or housemaids either. A landlady was not beyond the 
range of his passionate ardor, and there is a romantic 
tradition in the force that he once proposed to a maiden 
lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her 
stony-hearted brother. He was madly smitten by a 



132 AN IRISH CRAZr-QUILT. 

new object of adoration about every five minutes. He 
was a rejected and bliglited being on an average twice 
a week. An introduction to any member of the fairer 
sex, from a school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed 
in a quarter of an hour or so by an offer of his hand 
and heart. He wasn't in the least particular as to face, 
figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he 
loafed around for a couple of days, heaving out fog 
signals in the way of sighs, and looking as melancholy 
as an owl in a shower-bath. If accepted, he left the 
fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and forgot all 
about her before he had turned the first corner. 

In this manner he had vowed undying love to two 
hundred and seventeen cooks, forty-three chamber- 
maids, nineteen housekeepers, and four washerwomen, 
before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Tim- 
mins. 

His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change 
his beat at frequent intervals. Eleven spinsters were 
on the lookout for him in Berkeley Square, so that was 
forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of promise 
actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, 
and he dare not pass that classic ground even on top 
of an omnibus, except on a wet day, when he could 
hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big 
brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around 
Sydenham wanted to know his intentions, and he could 
only venture through that popular London suburb m 
an effort to beat the record on a bicycle. 

No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of 
escape from all these horrors which a trip to Ireland 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 133 

afforded him. But, alas ! he brought across the chan- 
nel with him that inflammal^le bosom that had been 
kindled so often with the warmth of love's flickerino: 
torch. He had not been in Dublin a week before he 
had pledged his no longer youthful affections to one of 
the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd, 
Burns & Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices — 
"Original price, 2 guineas ; selling off for 17s. 6d. ! !" 
The evening w^as wet. It was also dusky. Timmins 
was arrayed to conquer in a swallow-tailed coat and a 
lavender cravat. This was one of the elaborate cos- 
tumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to 
Avin the confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm 
himself into their secrets. To preserve this gorgeous 
get-up, he sheltered it from the pelting rain in the hos- 
pitable doorway of Todd, Burns & Co. 

By and by he became aware of the presence of a 
female form divine. (It was the wirework arrange- 
ment on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung, but 
it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He 
could not see her face, but her figure was perfection. 
He felt an exquisite thrill under his left-hand waistcoat 
pocket. 

He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He 
ventured a modest observation about the rain. No re- 
ply. " Sweet, ghy, blushing creature ! " he murmured, 
and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to 
hold forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, 
Swiss snow-storms, mists on the Scottish mountains, 
fogs in the London slums, moonlight effects on the 
helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes, 



134 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of 
nature. Still no response. 

"Ah, poor soul ! She trembles at a voice which, no 
doul)t, wakens reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me 
reassure her." And he edged up alongside the silent 
object of his thoughts, and launched out into a disqui- 
sition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, 
and electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, 
and finally, in a stage whisper, asked, " Couldst thou, 
fair unknown, share with a kindred spirit the joys, the 
hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing, of 
this brief life? AVouldst thou venture with a respon- 
sive soul to dare the scorn and sneers, the proud man's 
hate, the rich man's contumely, and the other goings 
on of the 'igh and 'aughty? Wiliest thou Hy with me 
to sunnier climes? — we'll take the tramcar to Harold's 
Cross or Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous 
being? Behold me, dearest Behnda, or Evangeline, or 
Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or whatever 
thy sweet name may be — l)ehold me at thy feet ! " 

And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing 
so knocked over the bemantled framework, and his 
head got entangled in the wire and tapes of which it 
was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet 
of plate-glass and tied the other up in a " choice assort- 
ment of all-wool shirts at half a crown, reduced from 
four shillings." When a policeman was called in, and 
he was given into custody for an audacious attempt 
at robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he 
spilled some of it in the shape of tears. 

The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 135 

tender-hearted Timmins, and gave him to understand 
that dry goods stores were not the most likely places 
to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn't 
tell the difterence between a milliner's dummy and a 
sprightly Irish colleen would be as likely as not to 
arrest a tobacconist's negro on a charge of dynamite 
conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought 
it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, 
where drapers' figures are less attractive than in the 
Irish metropolis. 

This is the true and circumstantial history of the 
catastrophe which shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed 
Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit those wonderfully 
informed London journals, the Standard '^.w^ Daily Tel- 
egraph, published paragraphs to the efi'ect that Timmins' 
unsleeping vigilance had made him such a marked man 
that it was deemed advisable to remove him from the 
sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins 
himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose 
the torrents of his policeman's soul again except in the 
glare of broad noonday, or at least beneath the efi'ul- 
gence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric light. 



BALFOUR'S WISH. 



WHEN members have taken their usual places. 
And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have 
been read, 
The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces, 

Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach's head ; 



136 AN IRISH CRAZr-QUILT. 

And as, one by one, question follows on question, 
Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea. 

In agony mental that spoils his digestion, 
But murmurs, " I wish I were out in Fiji ! " 

" Can you tell me," asks one, in a deep tone of thunder, 

"How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?" 
"Don't yoQ know," cries another, in accents of wonder, 

"The average size of potatoes in Clare?" 
A third seeks a legal opinion, without 

Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee. 
And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout, 

While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji. 

Affairs of the person, affairs of the State, 

Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar. 
What should be a sub-constable's average weight ? 

Does he ever indulge in the national car? 
Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle? 

Is it whiskey he swigs when he's out on a spree ? 
And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle, 

" Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji ! " 



OUR CAUSE. 

SEVEN hundred years of blood and tears, of famine 
and of chains, 
Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the 

plains. 
Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant's 

rage. 
Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 137 

Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom 

that illume, 
With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered 

Ireland's «:loom : 
Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a 

moment's pause, 
For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the 

glorious cause ! 

Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow's 

hireling spears. 
And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers. 
And what though Cromwell's fraud and craft had blunted 

Irish swords, 
They still could deal rude blows of steel on William's 

German hordes. 
The after years beheld, 'tis true, the old green flag laid 

by, 

No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient 

sky, 

But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal 

laws, 
The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified 

the cause. 

It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety- 
eight ; 

It only slept when Erin wept o'er gallant Emmet's fate ; 

O'Coiinell's accent broke the trance, and found the cause 
once more 

Still burning in the nation's soul as brightly as of yore. 



138 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Hanger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones, 
And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish 

bones ; 
But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration 

draws. 
And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given 

for the cause. 

What is that cause that time nor change has ever known 

retreat. 
That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat, 
That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant's breath. 
Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile's 

death? 
'Tis mother Ireland's liberty, expansive and complete, 
No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet ; 
Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude's 

applause. 
And the scafibld is a kingly throne ascended for the 

cause ! 



SERVED HIM RIGHT. 



[An Irish girl, hearing that her brother Pat had been killed in the 
Royal Irish, fighting against the Mahdi, said : " It served Pat right. 
He had no business going out there to fight those poor creatures 
(the Arabs). May God strengthen the Mahdi." — London Graphic.'] 

I HAVE no tears for brother Pat, 
Though stark he lies, and stiff and gory, 
On the Egyptian desert, that 

He might assist in England's glory. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 13D 

The foes he fought were not his own, 
Nor his the tyrant's cause he aided ; 

Then why should I his fate bemoan? 
O brother, faithless and degraded ! 

He saw how Saxon laws at home 

Had crushed his sires and banned his l^rothers. 
Why should he cross the ocean's foam 

To place that hated yoke on others? 
The Arabs slew him in a flight 

For all by brave and free men cherished — 
Ay, for the cause of truth and right. 

For which his kith and kin had perished. 

No Arab chief in Ninety-eight 

Placed foot on Erin's shore as foeman ; 
They lent no spears to swell the hate 

Of Hessian hound and Orange ^^eoman. 
But those w^ho wrapt our homes in flame 

And trod us down like dumb-brute cattle — 
It was for them — oh, burning shame ! 

My brother gave his life in battle. 

Sure, every memory of late 

Must from his wretched heart have vanished ; 
Our hills and valleys desolate, 

Our ruined homes, our people banished. 
And yet, God knows, he learned in youth 

The gloomy story of his sireland — 
Drank in at mother's knees the truth 

That England is the scourge of Ireland. 



140 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

I cannot weep for l3rother Pat — 

' I hate the hellish cause he died for 5 

False traitor to the freedom that 

His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for-, 
E'en when in tearfid dreams I see 

The parching sands drift blood-stained o'er him, 
My grief is changed to anger. He 

Was treacherous to the land that l^ore him ! 



RAPPAREE SONG. 

COME up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on. 
And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-na- 
mon ; 
The darkness is creeping o'er mountain and vale, 
And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale. 
Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below, 
And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe : 
Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears 
We'll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years. 

They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to 

die 
Of famine and want 'neath the cold winter sky ; 
Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o'erthrown, 
And 'tis treason to ask or to hope for our own ; 
Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows — 
They craved but for bread, and were answered with 

blows ; 
And because we won't perish while feasting they be, 
Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we J 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 141 

We're robbers to snatch back our own from their hand, 
We're traitors because we are true to our land, 
And cut-throats, ha ! ha ! so tlie cowards can feel 
That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel ! 
They have hunted us down now for many a day ; 
To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they ; 
For we'll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we'll swear, 
Whilst we've arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that 
can dare. 



TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND. 

YOU tendered us when famine came 
The pity of a thought. 
Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame 

And hearts and souls you'd bought. 
Time's wheel turns round — you've lost your place, 
And right into your tyrant face, 
Your jibes and sneers 
Of many years 
At victims' tears 

Are thrown. 
And in God's name, 
Our hearts aflame. 
To-day we claim 
Our own ! 

Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves, 

Muscle and brain we wrought. 
Toiled, starved, and died — scarce for ourselves 

The crumbs of Lazarus sought ; 



142 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

And when ye flung us out a crust, 
Our faces grovelling in the dust, 
We gave ye thanks — 
No prize, all blanks 
In our poor ranks 

Was known ; 
But now, thank God, 
We've spurned your rod, 
And claim this sod 
Our own ! 

We lift our faces to the sky 

Where once our heads were bowed. 
We breathe no more a timid sigh, 

But speak our thoughts aloud. 

From dizzy hill and peaceful plain 

Our voices join in this refrain : 

The seeds we sow, 

The crops we grow, 

The fields we mow, 

Alone, 
Without your aid 
In cash or spade 
At last are made 
Our own ! 



BALFOUR REJOICES. 

SO the toil of the session is over, 
My Avoes for a period cease. 
And hey for a journey by Dover 
To latitudes promising peace ; 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 143 

Away to recuperate vigor — 

Away from obstruction's mad spell — . 

Away from the questions of Biggar — 
Away from the taunts of Parnell. 

No more my poor head shall be aching 

With night after night of debate — 
No more shall my soul feel a quaking 

At bald, irrepressible prate. 
And, though ocean attack me with rigor, 

While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell 
On the fact that I'm leaving Joe Biggar, 

And getting away from Parnell. 

No more to be quizzed on each capture 

Of priest or of peasant by night — 
I could dance the can-can in my rapture. 

Or stand on my head with delight. 
Play the banjo and sing like a nigger. 

Or like a wild Irishman yell 
Hurroo ! I am free from Joe Biggar, 

And don't give — ahem — for Parnell ! 

Yet I feel an occasional spasm 

At thoughts of returning at all, 
'Twere better to leap down a chasm 

Or under an avalanche fall ; 
Or, fingers embracing the trigger. 

Let the pistol's report loudly tell 
How I hated the queries of Biggar 

And the dolorous talk of Parnell. 



144 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER. 

THERE may be some miserable beings to whom the 
existence of that powerful organ of public opinion, 
the Stretchville Sparrow, is a sealed volume, or, more 
correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be 
the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the 
Stretchville Spai^row {vide its own circular) is a power, 
a forty-horse power, in the universe. Circulating, as it 
does, among the three hundred adults of Stretchville 
and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspii'es awe and 
creates astonishment. As befits a journal with respon- 
sibilities so tremendous, and a status so imposing, it 
aims to keep abreast of the times. So when the Land 
League agitation had brought Ireland and the Irish 
prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the 
New York Herald and Tinhune and Times and the 
Boston Herald and a score of other dailies had their 
specials over in the sorrowful country, the Sparroiu felt 
imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by fol- 
lowing the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, book- 
keeper, advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was 
therefore ordered to hold himself in readiness to embark 
on a perilous journey (via the editorial back room) 
through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of 
Kerry. He was equipped for the expedition with a 
school map of Ireland and an old copy of Thom's Dub- 
lin Directory, which contained a list of all the landed 
gentry of the country. 

His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 145 

ground. " You know as much about the country now," 
observed his chief, "as if you were there. We've got 
to lick the New York Herald and the rest of 'cm. 
Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, 
let us have two. There's nearly two thousand names 
in that directory. With judicious management they 
ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You'd 
better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his 
demise. It won't do to shoot one fellow three or four 
times. People want variety. You might skin a bailiif 
or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, 
and give us some lively telegrams." 

Well, it ivas lively for a few weeks after that in the 
82oarroio. One day we had : " Fearful Murders in Ire- 
land — Seven Landlords Shot ! " The next there was 
a six-inch heading, "Cannibalism in Connemara — Six 
Agents Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed ! " 
Then when the Tribune came out with a summary of 
three months' Irish outrages, and showed that there had 
been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and 
one hundred and seven assaults upon bailiffs and pro- 
cess servers, that conscientious reporter, who had been 
told to double every crime reported elsewhere, and 
who didn't grasp the fact that the Tribune's was a three- 
months' record, paralyzed the readers of the Sparrow 
with a blood-curdling telegram to the effect that there 
had been a horrible night's battue in the Emerald Isle, 
twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in 
their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of 
the law having suffered every conceiveable indignity, 
from swallov/ing writs and processes on the half-shell, 



146 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILf. 

to being stripped naked and turned loose for light 
recreation in nettle beds or around wasps' nests. By 
this time the special had got half through his directory, 
and the list of names eligible for assassination was 
rapidly dwindling down, so he had to improvise a few. 
His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of 
variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or 
five hundred land-owners in pretty nearly the same 
sentences every time. He should diversify the details. 
He diversified. Here's his style : — 

" Galway, Tuesday. — A man named M'Swilkin took 
a farm last week from which the previous tenant had 
been evicted. He was waited upon yesterday evening 
by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he weighed 
forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons 
have been three days excavating for lead, and haven't 
done striking new veins yet." 

" At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael 
Moolannigan boasted that he had paid his rent. His 
widow complains that she can't hold a decent wake on 
a pair of braces and two buttons. She wants more 
of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance " 

This special correspondence continued to be tele- 
graphed from the editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or 
Cahlrciveen or Letterkenny, according to the scene of 
the last big thing in murders, until readers began to 
get kind of hardened to it, and didn't mind half-a-dozen 
murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the 
same number of errors in a base-ball match. Under 
the circumstances, it was thought as well to drop the 
Irish agency. "You had better return," observed the 
chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 147 

bar next door. " AYe'll wind up your Irish tour with an 
interview. I'll interview you. Just throw us in a few 
spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue, and you 
can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will 
be handy for Sunday's edition." I give the interview 
as it appeared in the 8parrow, to show how scrupu- 
lously truthful was that Irish correspondent : — 

"Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us 
in Ireland, and whose energy enabled us to publish 
information which no other journal was in a position to 
obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretch- 
ville. As w^e had not seen Mr. Blank before his depart- 
ure for Hibernian shores, and were anxious to notice 
for ourselves what manner of man this was wdio for the 
past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, 
his repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil 
in . But to abbreviate. 

"We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking 
gentleman, upon whose brow the impress of truth and 
candor were stamped in Nature's indelible marking-ink. 
He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a grey- 
hound, whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had 
no tail. The thin elongation of its body was so super- 
lative that it seemed as if Nature had given up in de- 
spair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy 
proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was 
excited, and we asked him how he came into possession 
of the canine ghost. 

"'I do not like telling the story,' he answered; 'I 
have a horror of being suspected of giving utterance 
to an untruth. But this mute witness will corroborate 



148 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was 
down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. 
My mission brought me into Ballykill — something or 
somebody. I never witnessed anything like the des- 
titution among the landlords there in my life before. 
They were worn to threads. 

"'I was informed that on a moonliofht nisfht it took 
three of them to make a shadow. I would not have 
believed myself that less than a dozen could produce 
anything like a respectable shade. 

"'Well, one landlord, who had been master of the 
hounds, had only two of the pack left. He and his 
family had lived during the winter upon the others. 

"'The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to 
pieces tr^^ing to bark at me — just collapsed like a 
house of cards. 

" ' The second animal you see with me. His sagacity 
was remarkable. He felt it his duty to bark at the 
stranger, but the fate of his companion warned him of 
the danger. So he leaned carefully against a Avail, and 
succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his 
extraordinary instinct. I bought him from his skeleton 
owner, a poor lath of a fellow you could blow out with 
a puff like a rush-light. 

"'I o'ave the man a shillino- for him — in two six- 
pences, so that he could balance himself. If he had 
got the shilling to carry in either side pocket, it would 
have brought him down. 

" ' I shall always take credit to myself for preserv- 
ing that poor man's centre of gravity. 

"'I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the 



AN IltI.>H CKAZY-QUILT. 149 

dining-room, but, fearing he might slip under the door, 
I tied a double knot on his tail. In my brief temporary 
absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom of 
a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as 
his tail. He couldn't get the double knot through 
but he was able to reach the meat. He fed. You see 
the result. He could get no farther in, and after his 
feed he couldn't get back past his stonaach. I found 
him in that position when I returned. To save him 
from a lingering death, I had to vivisect his tail.' 

" We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake 
about the double knot. The dog was of a breed whose 
tails are naturally short ; so much so, that it would 
require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot 
out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant 
to reply for a moment, but, coming to, he explained 
that, going to rest supperless, the Irish landlords' dogs 
had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails in their 
mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. 
This had a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter 
end. * And, at any rate,' concluded our contributor, 'I 
would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of a knot on a 
docv's tail!'" 

THE IRISH BRIGADE. 

WHEN in sorrow and darkness they left their 
lov'd home. 
They won, far away, o'er the ocean's salt foam, 

A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade. 
A welcome they found from fair France and proud 
Spain, 



150 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain ; 
And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face, 
'Twas to meet the avengers of Erin's disgrace, 
And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade ! 

Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout, 
When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out, — 

The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade. 
They thought of the land they had left o'er the sea. 
And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee. 
Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes. 
Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose 

From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade ! 

When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain. 
Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy's plain, 

Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made ; 
The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang 
O'er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang 
From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might 
Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight. 

Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade ! 

Then, hurrah ! for the fame of our faithful and brave, 
Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave, 

In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid. 
Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught, 
They loved the green island, and died where they 

fought ; 
With face to the foeman unconquered they fell. 
May w^e fight the battle of freedom as well 

For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade I 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 151 



SNOOKS. 

JUSTICE in Ireland, as administered by those awful 
instruments of the law, the omniscient J. P.'s, is 
a profoundly solemn thing. The high priest of the 
Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist 
temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islara of the Mohammedan faith, 
has only about one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous 
importance that a West British honorary magistrate 
possesses. They believe themselves to be not only 
pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitu- 
tion, but its very corner-stones. Therefore, when one 
of these Olympic deities condescends to unbend to our 
more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we 
should be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know 
that, great as he is, he is but human after all. Such 
an incident is worthy of imperishable record, and we 
eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange : — 

"In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter 
sessions relative to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, 
which insult consisted of the defendant's whistling 
'Harvey Duff,' the chairman said: 'There is a differ- 
ence between a policeman and an ordinary individual. 
When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the 
office he holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub- 
Constable Snooks [laughter'] that is insulted, but it is 
the office that is held by Snooks.' \_Laughter.'\ " 

Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his 
brilliant intellect that bright sparkle about Snooks? 
The delicacy and yet the pungency of the wit, added 
to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning. 



152 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feel- 
ings of deepest admiration I dedicate this rhythmic 
paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to that gorgeous 
Abbeyfeale chairman ; — 

If you notice a policeman at the corner of a street 
In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet, 
A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat. 

And confusion quite apparent in his looks, 
An odor floating round him you'd no reason to expect. 
You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object ; 
The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect, 

'Tis the law's inebriated, and not Snooks. 

A policeman is no ordinary mortal ; so suppose 

It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there 

grows 
A pimple at the end of 27's Roman nose, 

Which his dignity but very little brooks. 
You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh. 
And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff". 
Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his 
staff" — 

'Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks ! 



CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS. 

TOWARDS the close of the year 1867, that mighty 
empire, the drum-beat of whose soldiers welcomes 
the sun all round the world, was plunged into one of 
those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted 
her like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 153 

pranks of Fenianism first disturbed the digestions of her 
statesmen. Three brave men had just been hanged in 
the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel leaders, 
and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty 
conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retri- 
bution which was felt to be deserved, and of which 
more thnn one indication had been foreshadowed. For, 
to say nothing of the terrible explosion at Clerkenwell, 
London, by which some twenty people were killed and 
hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metro- 
politan and provincial paper shrieked forth dire warn- 
ings of mysterious plots, awful conspiracies, and blood- 
curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had been 
discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. 
That smoky Lancashire town was instantly declared in 
a state of siege. The volunteers were called out, every 
male between the ages of twelve and eighty was sworn 
in as a special constable, and in the terrible confusion 
of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far 
lost their presence of mind as to beat other fellows' 
wives instead of their own, while some of them became 
such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like Christians for 
a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats 
were seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred 
yards of the mayor's residence. So convinced was that 
functionary that they were stuffed with nitro-glycerine 
or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express 
for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief con- 
stable to seize the suspicious feline carcasses. With 
the assistance of a detachment of enmneers and the 

o 

entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the defunct 



154 AN IRISH CRAZY- QUILT. 

tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn't a chemist 
in England's borders would undertake a post-mortem 
examination, so they were carefully conveyed far out 
into St. George's channel, and committed to the depths 
of the silent waters. 

It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject 
state of alarm existed. The military guards were 
trebled, the police force was augmented by all the men 
that could be spared from the county constabulary, 
the Irish population was placed under the closest sur- 
veillance ; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all 
public buildings and important warehouses, which were 
amply supplied with bags of sand and buckets of water 
in view of any possible conflagration, the sand being 
for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like 
Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can't be quenched 
by cold water, and must therefore be smothered. So 
overwhelmed was the superintendent of the Manchester 
police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he ran 
away from them along with the wife of the resident 
magistrate, Mr. Fowler. In his absence, the duty of 
guarding the city from the Fenian bombs, dynamite, 
powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon 
the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who 
were then in garrison at Manchester. It is easy to im- 
agine the horror of this officer when, a few days after 
his appointment, he received a letter containing the 
details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and anni- 
hilate the troops. On a given night the gas mains were 
to be severed, and in the ensuing darkness the town was 
to be fired in a hundred places, the barracks attacked 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 155 

by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes, 
bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Rem- 
ington rifles, sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the 
devoted Cameron men chopped into as many fragments 
as the squares of their tartans. 

Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed 
three mutchkins of Glenlivat and consumed a quarter- 
pound of snuff in two minutes without knowing it. 
Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council 
of the Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Mac- 
gregors of those various ilks, and after many applica- 
tions of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of 
Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The 
sentries were doubled, and the remainder of the garri- 
son ordered to sleep upon their arms. Sand-bags were 
piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets 
and tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, 
greatest effort of the entire strategy, each kilted war- 
rior was provided with two tallow candles and a box of 
matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as 
to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in 
the event of an Egyptian darkness suddenly enshroud- 
ing them in gloom. Consequently they were much 
divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was 
to hold the candles while the other did the shooting ; 
or should each Highlander carry his own candle in his 
bonnet or his kilt ; or were they to pile the candles in 
a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around 
them ; or was it possible the candles were intended for 
rations, should the siege last any time. Luckily no 
occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of the candle 



156 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

idea or of the candles themselves, but for days after- 
wards a doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aber- 
feldy would be surprised, when at the friendly fireside 
of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to find 
Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether 
limbs, and would learn too late that he had forgotten 
to take his strange munitions of war out of his pocket, 
and was consequently indulging in a warm tallow bath. 
In time the story oozed out, and until this day that bat- 
talion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of 
Manchester as the Caledonian Candlesticks. 



FAITHFUL TO THE LAST. 

SO they've found another victim and another rebel 
dies, 
A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies ; 
Another name is added to our country's martyr-roll, 
And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish 

soul ; 
All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers 

and their spies, 
With months of preparation, could imagine and devise. 
Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life 

was passed, 
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to 

the last ! 

When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered 

like a hound. 
Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird 

him round, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. l57 

Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange 

and dismal place, 
Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched 

your face ; 
With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant 

heart within, 
With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud 

or sin, 
You saw the hangman's rope for you spun furiously 

and fast. 
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to 

the last ! 

No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do 

with slaves ? 
You were far too grand and noble to recruit their liand 

of knaves ; 
You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and 

brain and bone. 
And those were crimes which nothing but your young 

life could atone ; 
But not all the jailer's terrors, and not all death's awful 

gloom. 
The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the 

tomb, 
A shadow o'er your spirit for a single hour could cast, 
So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to 

the last ! 



158 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

FENIAN BATTLE-SONG. 

HURRAH ! we stand on Irish land, 
Our hated foe before us, 
And once for all, to rise or fall. 
The green flag flying o'er us, 
We've raised it proudly overhead. 

God prosper our endeavor. 
Unite our bands, and nerve our hands. 
To keep it there forever ! 

We marched away at break of day. 

And sweethearts left behind us, 
To strike one blow at yon false foe, 

Whose rusty fetters bind us. 
For while we bear the name of men, 

We'll crouch no more as slaves, boys, 
Oh, Ireland shall be free again. 

Or we'll be in our graves, boys ! 

We've listened long to traitors mean. 

False England's scarlet praising ; 
We've heard them mock our Irish green 

Until our blood seemed blazino^ ! 
And chieftains, too, who should be true. 

Have kept our ranks asunder. 
But Faction's sound to-day is drowned 

In Freedom's battle-thunder ! 

Then here's hurrah for all the brave, 
No matter who may lead 'em. 

And here's a curse on every slave 
Who mars the cause of freedom ! 



AK iRiSH CRAZY-QtJILT. 159 

Let leaders vain aside remain 

Until their feuds are ended, 
'Tis by the man who knows no clan 

Our flag must be defended. 

We've men from Gal way to Kildare, ' 

From Limerick's walls to Derry, 
Bold ramblers from the County Clare 

And mountaineers from Kerry. 
We'll chase our alien foes away, 

We'll tear our bonds asunder ; 
We care not who's to lead to-day. 

We'll fi2:ht and conquer under ! 



THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.* 

FAR, away from the home and the friends they love 
best, 
'Mid murd'rers and felons all silent they rest ; 
Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot 
Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and 
rot! 

Li the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side, 
With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died ; 
And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near. 
On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear ! 

*Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, executed at Manchester, England, for 
their share in the rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy, two Fenian 
leaders, were buried in the prison grounds, their bodies being re- 
fused to their relatives lest their funeral should be made the occa- 
sion of a demonstration. 



• 



160 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT, 

Surrounded by foemen, 'mid jeering and hate, 
True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate. 
With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree — 
Dear home of our fathers ! they perished for thee ! 

When they took them away from that desolate place, 
They found death had left a bright smile on each face. 
So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see 
How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three ! 

For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind 
The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind ; 
And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave. 
Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave ! 

Long, long may our land guard and treasure each name. 
Till a nation made free hymns their glorious fame ; 
And our grandsons shall tell that from yonder cold grave 
Sprang the spirit yet destined our nation to save ! 



DEATH'S VICTORY. 

IN MEMORIAM JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

THE Poet may grieve for his Art's vacant throne ; 
The Patriot mourn for a brave spirit flown ; 
For the loss of a hero the Soldier may sigh. 
And the Church miss a star from her glorious sky. 

But with these 'tis not death — for through every age, 
In the lore of the Student, in History's page, 
In the stories they tell, the examples they give, 
Of Genius and Truth — he will live ! he will live ! 



AN IRISH CRAZr-QUILT. 161 

With the cypress the kiurel of glory shall twine 

To deck the white shaft that will rise o'er his shrine ; 

In sunshine a banner, in darkness a flame, 

To his land and his kindred shall long be his name. 

But to those who have loved him, oh ! what can replace 
The grasp of his hand or the light of his face, 
The true, tender friendship an angel might prize. 
That played round his lips and that shone in his eyes ? 

Ah ! for us, faithful heart, he is lost in the grave 
Till he welcomes us, too, over death's dismal wave ; 
No solace can sweeten one tear that we shed- — 
He lives to the world, but to us he is dead. 



THE GREEN FLAG AT FREDERICKSBURG. 

BEAR it up, bear it up, through the clouds of the 
battle. 
On, on, through the smoke and the glare ; 
Though in hail<-storms the balls from yon black ramparts 
rattle, 
We will plant it triumphantly there. 
Though now, by the eddying war-dust beclouded, 

'Twas lost at the base of the hill. 
See again, on its summit, in flame-wreaths ensjirouded, 
Our flag waves triumphantly still ! 

We have marched 'neath its folds over meadow and 
mountain. 

In sunshine and shower, side by side ; 
To guard it we opened our hearts' living fountain, 

Till it flowed in a hot crimson tide ; 



162 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

And guard it we will for the dear ones who love us, 
Till death bids our warm hearts be chill, 

And our foes even then shall behold that above us 
Our flag waves triumphantly still ! 

'Tis the flag that our sires and our grandsires died 
under ; 

The flag that our children shall bear 
When at home in the old land the cannon's dread 
thunder 

Knells Tyranny's doom on the air. 
'Twill be born o'er the foam-crested weaves of the ocean, 

And true hearts in Ireland shall thrill 
To see in the land of their love and devotion 

Our flag wave triumphantly still. 



THE FLAG OF OUR LAND. 

COME kinsmen, come clansmen, from South and 
from North, 
Hark ! hark ! the wild slogan of war pealing forth ! 
It rings through each vale, and from peak unto peak 
The heather-clad mountains in thunder-tones speak ; 
It calls on our loyal, our true, and our brave, 
From the whispering heath and the hollow-toned wave. 
With sabre and musket, and red battle-brand. 
To gather once more 'neath the Flag of our Land. 

Shall the stranger still rule in the halls of our sires? 
Shall our waters still mirror the plunderers' fires ? 
Shall our manhood be lost, and our darling old sod 
By tyrants and traitors forever be trod? 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 163 

'Mid the nations around us, oh, say, shall our name, 
Our cause, and our people be bywords for shame? 
No ! We swear by the graves of our fathers to stand 
For freedom or death 'neath the Flag of our Land I 

By the fame of our martyrs, the memory of those 
Who fell, side by side, ever fronting their foes ; 
By the plunderers' fires and the murderers' steel ; 
By the wrongs we have felt and the hatred we feel ; 
By the scaffold's red path and the dungeon's dread 

gloom. 
And their myriad victims who call from the tomb. 
Meet the foe and strike home with a vengeance-nerved 

hand. 
Till his false blood shall crimson the Flag of our Land ! 



HURRAH FOR LIBERTY. 

AROUSE ye from your slumbering. 
Awake to life once more, 
The time for idle pleadings 

And for vain regrets is o'er ; 
We'll bend and crouch no more like hounds. 

But in a fight like men, 
With men's brave hearts and men's stout arms 
We'll win our own again. 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! hurrah for liberty ! 
Till death w^e stand. 
To make our land 

A nation proud and free. 



164 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUlLt. 

We bent unto the tyrant, 

And we prayed in vain for years, 
But now we're going to try, boys, 

Rifle-balls instead of tears. 
Our sighs shall be the trumpet's call, 

The rolling of the drum. 
And in future our petitions 

From the cannon's mouth shall come. — Hurrah ! 

From Galway right to Wicklow, 

And from Cork to Donegal, 
We'll march once more for liberty 

To win it or to fall. 
We'll flaunt our flag from clifl^ and crag. 

And guard it with our steel ; 
We'll show our foes what deadly blows 

Each Irish arm can deal. — Hurrah ! 

In ages past the redcoats quailed 

Before our fathers' might ; 
Have we not still the courage left 

To battle for the right? 
Though cowards dread the troops in red, 

We'll cross their steel with joy. 
And show that Irish valor was 

Not spent at Fontenoy. 

The wily knave, the coward slave, 

To home and life may cling, 
But there's no place for falsehood's face 

Where gleaming sabres ring t 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 165 



We've thrown our oaiic, our lives we wai^e 

For Freedom and for Right ; 
Appeals we've tried ; now, God decide, 

Our last appeal is fight 1 



THE MESSENGER. 

KOVEMBER 23, 1S67.* 



WITH bated breath and trembling lips, we gathered 
round him there — 
Tall, sinewy men with faces bronzed, and maidens young 

and fair ; 
We questioned him with eager eyes — we had not 

power to speak, 
For a nameless dread was in each heart, and whitened 
every cheek ! 

Twice, thrice his lips moved silently, his tongue re- 
fused its task. 

We spoke not, but he knew right well the question we 
would ask ; 

And thrice he strove to answer it, but thrice he strove 
in vain. 

While down his cheeks the tear-drops fell in blinding 
showers like rain ! 

* On this day William Philip Alleu, Michael O'Brien, and Michael 
Larkin were hanged in Manchester, England, for the rescue of two 
Fenian leaders. Until the sentence of death was actually carried 
into effect it was not believed that the first political execution since 
that of Robert Emmet would take place. A mass meeting was held 
at the Old Swan Cross in Manchester, to welcome the reprieve, but 
their messenger brought news of the execution instead. 



166 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

And by his grief at last Ave knew the news lie could 

not tell, 
And over every hope a black and l)lighting shadow 

fell I 
A sickening weight seemed pressing, oh ! so heavy on 

each heart, 
That it stayed our bitter wailings, and forljade our tears 

to start ! 

And stalwart men, whose fiery wrath and fierce, resist- 
less might 

Had turned the ebbing tide of war in many a l^lood}' 
fight ; 

Whose whirlwind charge and wild hurrah made South- 
ern foemen reel, 

Whose breasts had pressed unshrinkingly 'gainst triple 
lines of steel — 

Aye, men like these, true scions of our fearless Celtic 

race, 
Who fear not death, but meet it with a smile upon the 

face — 
Now stood so still, so motionless, so silent in their 

woe, 
It seemed as if they'd fallen, too, beneath the crushing 

blow ! 

Oh ! who shall say what mournful tears that bitter 
night were shed. 

And who shall count the curses heaped upon the mur- 
derer's head : 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 167 

What heartfelt prayers ascended to the throne of the 
Divine, 

For the heroes who had fallen on their suff'ring coun- 
try's shrine ! 

He,* boy in years ])ut man in heart, who, pale and 

fearless, trod 
The scaffold's path as proudly as if 'twere his native 

sod ; 
Who stood upon the grave's dark brink with heart that 

never failed. 
With lips that never quivered, and with eyes that 

never quailed ! 

And he, f the dark-eyed soldier,.who, unhurt, untouched, 

had pass'd 
Through many a hard-fought battle-tield, now fronted 

death at last ; 
And such a death — the felon's death — the death that 

villains die — 
He met it with a smiling face, and with a flashing eye ! 

And, last of all, the father, | who that day would leave 
behind 

Poor helpless children to a world, harsh, pitiless, un- 
kind : 

No wonder if he faltered — 'twas, oh God ! a fearful test ; 

Yet he met his fate as bravely and as proudly as the rest. 

* Allen — nineteen years old. 

t O'Brien — A brave Union soldier, who had fought in Meagher's 
Irish Brigade. 
X Larkin — An elderly man, who left a widow and four orphans. 



168 AN IRXSH CKAZY-QUILT. 

And these are murderers, they say — are cowards, base 

and vile : 
These gallant ones who perished for their distant native 

isle — 
Cowards and murderers, they say ; oh, grant us patience, 

God! 
Oh, grant us patience yet to bear the tyrant's heavy 

rod. 



A TYPICAL TRIAL. 



JOSEPH O'GRABALL, ex-Indian police inspector, 
and previously major in the Boomerang Blazers, 
has for the past two years looked after the peace and 
well-being of a southern district in Ireland, which, to 
avoid offending the sensitive susceptibilities of its loyal 
squireocracy, I shall designate as Kilslippery, which is 
about as unlike its real cognomen as any word I am 
capable of coining. «Ioseph is unquestionably one of 
the most energetic of the many remarkably energetic 
divisional magistrates whose lively imaginations and 
diseased livers have found temporary fields for exercise 
in Ireland since the coercion act passed into law. 

Major 0'Gral)all is a terror not merely to all evil- 
doers in the locality decorated by his rubicund nose 
and enlivened by his oriental profimity, but he has 
managed to establish himself as an unmitigated nuisance 
to nine-tenths of the entire population. He possesses 
the disturbing faculty of becoming " reasonably sus- 
picious " of anybody on the slightest provocation and at 
the shortest notice. He firmly believes that -he can tell 



AN IRISH CKAZr-QUILT. 169 

an Invincible or a Moonlighter half a mile away hy the 
manner of his stride or the cut of his pants. He per- 
ambulates the country-side with a mounted escort daily, 
and scrutinizes the features of every individual he 
meets, irrespective of age, sex, garb, or occupation. 
He is prepared to detect treason in the shape of a nose, 
read murder and arson in the twinkle of an eye, and 
discover dynamite in the curl of a mustache. 

Christy Connell was a small farmer whose evil fate 
made his path of life lie in the scope of the major's 
inquisitorial vision. Christy was a simple, hard-work- 
ing man, with such a numerous progeny that there is 
little fear of the name of Connell ever dying out in 
those parts unless there's an earthquake or a volcanic 
eruption. His task of supporting this battalion of 
Councils was such a difficult one that he had no leisure 
to attend to politics or concern himself with the agita- 
tion. But the very fact of his constant attention to his 
farm only served to arouse O'Graball's suspicion. 
Why, he argued, should a man keep sober, unless he 
was afraid to get drunk? and why should he stick so 
closely to his business, unless he wanted to conceal his 
treasonable sympathies? Then he wore an American 
goatee. Suspicious, decidedly suspicious. A goatee 
is military. Except the goatee, there was nothing mil- 
itary about Christy, for he was bow-legged and squmted. 
But then his bow-legs might have been induced by 
cavalry exercise, and his squint would be useful in 
enabling him to spot an objectionable landlord round 
the corner. 

With O'Graball, to suspect was to act. So one dark 



170 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 

April night a sergeant and half-a-dozen of the R. I. C. 
broke suddenly into Connell's, and, after one of those 
clever searches for which that corps is famed, they 
succeeded in discovering a hatchet, a sledge-hammer, 
several rusty nails, a rude drawing which appeared 
utterly incomprehensible to the indefatigable sergeant, 
and a letter bearing the New York post-mark, which, 
to the official mind, seemed an invaluable piece of doc- 
umentary evidence. 

"Make haste, Connell," said the sergeant. "You 
must come along with us." 

" Musha, phwat for?" queried the bewildered Con- 
nell. 

" To answer a charge of having unlawfully and ille- 
gally planned, devised, and conspired, with seditious, 
felonious, and treasonable intent, to destroy, deprive, 
rob, upset, and otherwise confuse Her Most Gracious 
Majesty Queen Victoria of her title and right as sover- 
eign lady of England, Scotland, Ireland, and also Kil- 
slippery, so help me God ! " and the sergeant wound up 
as if he were on oath in the witness-box. 

"Arrah, thin," said the overwhelmed Christy, "how 
could I rob or upset or confuse the Queen at all, at all. 
Sure, I niver cast my eyes on the ould heifer, good, bad, 
or indiiferent." 

" Silence ! Every word you say will be taken in evi- 
dence. That's the law." 

"Wirra, thin, bad luck to that same law." 

"Silence, I say again. I cannot tolerate treasonable 
expressions before my men. Come along." 

Amid the sobbing of his wife and little ones, and 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 171 

utterly amazed and confounded, Christy was handeuffed 
and dragged to the police barracks, where he passed a 
miserable night. In the morning he was brought into 
the awful presence of O'Graball, who at once com- 
menced in grave tones what he intended for a solemn 
interrogatory, but which proved in reality a rich bur- 
lesque : — 

" Prisoner, what is your name ? " 

" Christy Connell, plaze your worship.'* 

" It does not please me. It is a notoriously disloyal 
name. There have been several Councils hanged at 
various times. Your very possession of such a name 
is in itself a suspicious circumstance. Sergeant, make 
a note of it. He confesses his name is Connell. So 
far our information is correct. Now, prisoner, tell me, 
had you a mother ? " 

" Arrah, to be sure I had. What do you think I am, 
at all, at all?" 

"No prevarication, sir. You had also, I suppose, a 
father of the male gender ? " 

"He wore breeches, anyhow." 

"Prisoner, I must caution you against this unseem- 
ing levity. Sergeant, make another note. We have 
established the ftict of his birth. He had the custom- 
ary pair of parents, and he admits his name is Connell. 
The case is proved already. But we have further and 
overpowering testimony. Now, prisoner, does this axe 
belong to you ? " 

"Yes, your honor." 

" And this hammer? " 

"Yes, your lordship." 



172 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

" And these nails ? " 

"Yes, your worship's reverence." 

"Now, Christopher Connell, farmer, aged forty-two, 
were not that axe and this hammer and those nails de- 
signed to be used for nefarious and revolutionary pur- 
poses? You see we are thoroughly posted on your 
diabolical plots. Make an open breast of the matter, 
and I'll try how far my influence will go with the Crown 
in procuring a mitigation of your penalt}^ Conceal 
anything, and you will find me adamant. What do you 
say?" 

"Well, thin, your grace, I had the axe for nothin' 
but cuttin' firewood with ; the hammer was my father's ; 
sure, he was a blacksmith, the heavens be his bed ; and 
the nails — the nails — the troth, I don't know what I 
wanted the nails for at all. You can make a present of 
them to the sarjent." 

"Miserable man! Your ill-timed wit will injure 
instead of serving you. The axe and hammer were to 
be used in breaking open the doors of police barracks, 
and the nails, no doubt, were to be employed in hand 
grenades." 

" Well, by the blessid St. Patrick ! " ejaculated the 
amazed Connell, but he was speedily checked with a 
peremptory " Silence ! " while the sapient magistrate 
proceeded : — 

"We have even stronger proofs. Sergeant, did you 
find these documents ? " 

"Yes, your washup." 

"The first is a drawing, sketch, or plan. Where did 
you find that?" 



AN IRISH ClIAZY-QUILT. 173 

** Under one of the children's heads, your washup." 

"Evidently placed there for concealment. The sec- 
ond is a letter — a very important letter — from New 
York. Where did you discover that?" 

" On the chimney-piece, your washup." 

"Ha ! It was left there, no doubt, in the hope that 
you would not dream of looking for dangerous docu- 
ments in such an exposed position. Now, prisoner, 
what is this drawino^?" 

"Well, plaze your majesty, its a pictur' that Terry, 
the child, was thryin' to mek av the goat, the craytur, 
and the poor gossoon was so proud av it he tuk it to 
bed with him." 

" A goat ! Gracious heavens ! Christopher Connell, 
you are trifling with the court. That sketch, sir, I 
take to be a military map of Ireland, with the rivers 
and boundaries left out to mislead us. But learn that 
the eye of the law can discern everything, and it can 
penetrate through that goat's mask and see the grim 
secret behind ! " 

"Troth, your iminence, if that's a map of Ireland, it's 
proud the goat should be av his resemblance to the 
ould country. But sure it's joking you are." 

"You'll find it a serious joke, my man. But let us 
proceed. This letter is dated New York — the most 
treasonable locality on the face of the earth. It begins : 
'Dear brother — (of course you're all brothers. Ser- 
geant, make a note of that) — I write these few lines 
hoping they will find you in good health, as they lave 
me at present, thanks be to God. (There's some deep, 
hidden, occult meaning in that sentence, but I cannot 



174 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

discern it just now.) I met the ould man — (Rossa, I 
suppose. Make a note, sergeant) — on landing. He 
would advise you not to kill the ould pig just yet. 
(Old pig? old — oh! horrible! I see it all. They 
have actually contemplated the assassination of her 
?vlajesty. Terrible I) You might, however, get rid 
of the litter of young sucklings (the miscreant, to apply 
such language to the royal family.) I hope the praties 
and the rye are going on well. (Pikes and rifles he 
means — they begin with the same letter.) How's ould 
coffin-head these times ? ' Sergeant, who can he mean 
by that?" 

"Um — um — yourself, I think, your washup." 
"Sergeant, you forget yourself. I am not coffin- 
headed. Not even a rebel would dare apply such a 
term to me. Prisoner, in the face of the overwhelm- 
ing evidence adduced, I do not think it necessary to 
proceed further ; besides, there are other allusions which 
a thoughtless world might associate with me. Society 
must be preserved against such desperadoes. If I 
could trust the honesty of a jury of your countrymen, I 
would commit you for trial ; but, alas ! they would not 
see the evidence with the clear gaze which I bend upon 
it. Therefore I give you the highest sentence in my 
power— three months' imprisonment — and, sergeant, 
just look over the act and see under what clause we 
shall record it." 

Christy Connell served the three months, but to this 
day neither himself, the magistrate, the jailer, nor the 
county member who brought his case before Parliament 
have been able to find out for what he was convicted. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 175 

And that's one specimen out of a hundred of the working 
of the coercion act. 



JOHN BULL'S APPEAL TO JONATHAN. 

OH pray, good Cousin Jonathan, assist me in my 
plight; 
And ease my aching brain of this perpetual affright 
That keeps me quaking all the day and shivering all 

night — 
An incubus I can't shake off, a shade I cannot fight. 
I am very, very sorry for the Alabama's pranks, 
1 regret that I contributed to arm Secession's ranks. 
But if you'll only aid me now to crush these Irish 

cranks, 
Upon my knees I'll pledge eternal gratitude and 

thanks. 

As empress of the ocean, and as mistress of the waves, 
Britannia has a perfect right to string up Afghan 

braves ; 
To blow to bits, with dynamite, the Zulus in their 

caves. 
And to burn the huts of savages who will not be her 

slaves. 
But when the men she drove from home with steel and 

buckshot dare 
Keturn with nasty bombs to beard the lion in his lair, 
And send his best establishments cavorting through the 

air — 
Good Heavens ! you must admit it's quite a different 

affair. 



176 AN miSH ORAZr-QUILT. 

Poor Gladstone dare not crack an egg for fear it might 

explode, 
A hundred picked detectives guard her Majesty's abode. 
Sir William Harcourt feels unsafe by river, rail, or 

road. 
And letter-carriers tremble 'neath the lightest postal 

load. 
There is terror in the country and anxiety in town, 
Insurance rates are rising, while stocks are going down, 
And since his kilts and plaids were doffed, forever, by 

John Brown, 
Uneasy lies the royal head that wears the British crown. 

Then, pray, good Cousin Jonathan, vouchsafe to us 

some ease, 
I beg, implore, and crave of you, upon my bended 

knees. 
And in return I'll take of you whatever you may 

please. 
Pay homage to your bacon, and monopolize your 

cheese. 
But, oh, my brave blood relative, in Heaven's name 

don't delay. 
Do not hesitate a moment, do not hold your hand a 

day,. 
Our statesmen in another month will all be bald or 

gi'ay, 
Unless vile nitro-glycerine has blown the lot away. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 177 



THE STORY OF A BOMB. 



WHERE Shannon's waves with smiling face 
Woo smiling banks with soft embrace, 

A modest cabin stood beside 

Its gentle perfume-laden tide. 

The sunshine of an honest life, 

A prattling child, a loving wife, 

The joys of home, their blessings shed 

Around the peasant tenant's head. 

The twinkling stars of summer skies 
Reflected back his colleen's eyes, 
His baby's locks the noonday lays 
Encircled with a golden haze. 

But drear December, dark and chill. 
Whirled bliojhting blasts adown the hill, 
Sickness and famine scourged the land ; 
And in their train the landlord band. 
And aiding in their mission dire 
The liveried hounds in England's hire. 
In one brief hour their work was o'er, 
A happy home was home no more. 

The wintry skies looked sadly down. 
Half veiled in tears, half wrapt in frown, 
Upon the babe that sobbed to rest 
Upon its dying mother's breast. 

A week — a month — he had no power 
To mark or count each anguished hour, 



178 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

He knew not if 'twere night or day 

When wife and infant passed away. 

Without a hope to dull the pain 

That numbed his heart and seared his brain, 

Despair behind and gloom before, 

He left his native Shannon's shore, 

Whose rippling wavelets seemed to press 
The ship's dark side with fond caress. 
While chimes from many a distant bell 
Breathed Mother Erin's last farewell. 

Uncouth in dress, but huge of limb. 
With earnest faces fierce and grim. 
Are gathered near a silent swamp, 
• Eough toilers from a mining camp ; 
The rasping tones of Ulster greet 
The voice of Munster vsoft and sweet. 
And Connaught's mellow accent blends. 
But one and all are Ireland's friends. 

Yet whispering pines that bend above 
Hear words of hatred, not of love ; 
Tears that from eyes of strong men fall 
Are not of mercy, but of gall. 



Each has a sickening tale to tell 
Of England's robber rule of hell, 
Each has a deeply cherished cause 
To hate her power and curse her laws. 
" Then who will venture life, and go 
To wreak our venojeance on this foe, 



AN iRISlt CRAZY-QUILT. 179 



Though 'mid the ruins he may lie?" 
And he from Shannon answers " I ! " 
The western breezes catch the vow 
That surges from his bosom now, 
The exile's vengeful brand to bear 
And smite the tio^er in his lair. 



'O' 



In Babylonian halls to-night 

Are strains of mirth and flashing light, 

The sheen of satin, gleaming gems 

In scores of priceless diadems ; 

These are the butterflies, the drones, 

Vampires who feed on blood and bones. 

Ah, cruel parasites, beware, 

One victim of your wrong is there. 

The London skies are black with cloud 
.The earth en wrapt in night's dark shroud, 
As by the despot's citadel 
A hand from Shannon fires the shell. 

England, to thee and thine belongs 
The memory of uncounted wrongs 
That, multiplied through all the years, 
Have dried the fount of Ireland's tears. 
Thy fate is sealed, thy knell has tolled. 
Not thrice the sum of thrice thy gold 
Can turn the wrath thou hast defied 
Of hearts like those from Shannon's side. 
Thy future sky is overcast. 
Thy halcyon days forever past. 
Earthquake and storm shall overwhelm 
Thy towers and fanes, thy laws and realm, 



180 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



AVENGING, THOUGH DIM (1798). 



AVENGING, though dim, with the dust of inac- 
tion, 
And dinted and blunted through fraud and delay, 
With the hilt spoilt and scarred by the rude hands of 
faction, 
And the blade rusting slowly to useless decay, 
The swift sword of Erin, its temper unbroken. 

Leaped forth after years from its vain, idle shield, 
To smite to the earth the vile slander oft spoken. 
That true men e'er falter or brave spirits yield. 

The hearts that had dared to disturb its long slumber. 

With resolute nerve, may be laid in the chiy. 
But they woke from the harp-strings of Erin a number 

That throbs through the sgul of the nation to-day. 
And be it in future for joy or for sorrow. 

To clothe her in glory or shroud her in pall, 
The tyrants of Ireland shall iind from to-morrow 

The sweets of their empire embittered with gall. 



CHRISTMAS DIRGE OF THE LONDON POUCE (1885). 

CHRISTMAS is here with its fun and frivolity. 
Mistletoe, holly-bush, kindness, and cheer. 
Warmth and good-feeling, gay laughter and jollity. 

We should be happy — for Christmas is here. 
Yet to it all we are sadly insensible. 
We have no heart for festivities gay — 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 181 

Ah ! the dark future is incomprehensible, 
Irish conspiracies hatch night and day. 
Oh, dear ! what will become of us? 
Will they blow up every man or but some of us? 
Pity, oh pity, the visages glum of us ! 
Give us a rest — we are pining away. 

Beef and plum-pudding are sadly inferior 

To the dread terrors that nightly control 
All the dark depths of a peeler's interior, 
Spoiling his liver and crushing his soul ! 
Though brimming glasses are in the ascendency, 

Moistening cannot bring hope to our clay. 
For we may not place a moment's dependency 
How long intact shall our rendezvous stay ! 
O Lord ! but the immensity 
Of Irish vengeance in all its intensity 
Splits through the dullest official head's density, 
Turning our locks into premature gray. 

Holiday thoughts are no longer convivial. 

Peelers have long since forgotten to smile. 
Fears permeate them, not groundless or trivial, 

Of the omniscient Skirmisher's guile. 
How could a uniformed breast be hilarious, 

When it may shortly be scattered around. 
With scarce a prospect — oh future precarious ! 
That a brass button would ever be found? 
Oh, dear ! is there a river in 
England that hasn't a dynamite shiver in 
Ready to agitate, spasm, and quiver in 
Each beating heart that is left above ground ? 



182 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



IRELAND'S PRAYER (MAY, 1885). 

OH, children of that scattered race whose agony and 
tears 

Have called to Heaven for vengeance through seven 
hundred circHng years, 

Hark ! hear ye not the rising storm that beats on Eng- 
land's coasts ? 

The clank of swinging sabres and the tramp of march- 
ing hosts ? 

In every sign and portent read the swift-impending doom 

Of that Empire built by fraud and guile on murdered 
Freedom's tomb ; 

See tottering on Britannia's brow her loose imperial 
crown — 

God nerve the hands, no matter whose, upraised to 
drag it down ! 

Beside the storied Pyramids the desert's swarthy sons 
Have strewn the sands with English bleaching bones 

and rusting guns, 
And on another continent the gray coats of the Bear 
Advance with grim resolve to choke the Lion in his lair ; 
Arab or Tartar, what care we whose hand may deal the 

blow 
That lays a Saxon hireling or an Irish traitor low ? 
Where'er on English ramparts rolls the bloody tide of 

war, 
God bless El Mahdi's spearmen and the legions of the 

Czar ! 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 183 

Heaven oruide the Zulu asseo^ai until it sinks to rest 
From point to butt ensheathed in a quivering English 

breast ; 
May every stinging bullet from a half-breed rifle sped 
Complete and end its mission in an English lung or 

head ; 
For whosoever smashes blows on Britain's brazen 

form, 
Whatever hand upon her head brings battle-wrack and 

storm, 
Gives aid to prostrate Ireland that a patriot heart must 

feel ; 
So Heaven be with brave Osman, and God prosper 

Louis Kiel ! 



JOHN BULL'S NEW YEAR. 

JOHN BULL looked haggard and drear 
With fear, 
As the bells rang out the old year, 

'' Oh, dear ! " 
He moaned, " but my lot has been sorry and sore, 
I ne'er had twelve months of such trouble before, 
My neighbors all round seem to thirst for my gore,- 

It's queer. 

"With Hans I would like to agree. 

For he 
Is an inch or two taller than me, 

You see ; 



184 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

But he's gone to the Cape with a rush and a shout, 
And I had to vanish or he'd kick me out, 
And he says ever since he will ' pull mine snout 

Mit glee.' 

" Then Mossoo, who lives o'er the way 

Is gay 
At my numerous signs of decay 

Each day ; 
He snaps his fingers right under my nose, 
Laughs at my protests and treads on my toes, 
And has not a pitying word for my woes 

To say. 

" I once could warn Ivan the bear — 

Take care 

How the lion you stir in his lair. 

Beware ! 

But now he has laid his big claws on Herat, 

And all I can do is to squeal like a cat, 

And I fear that some day I'll be squelched like a rat 

Out there. 

" But my worst and my ugliest fright, 

A sight 
That keeps me in shivering plight 

All night, ~ 
Is the vengeance I earned from poor Pat long ago, 
He's my nearest neighbor but bitterest foe. 
And 'tis only just now I'm beginnmg to know 

His might ! 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 185 

" So for me there's no Happy New Year, 

Oh, dear 1 
But doubt, and misgiving, and fear 

Are here. 
My neighbors discover I'm toothless and blind, 
They cuff me before and they kick me behind, 
And in all the world not a friend can I find 

To cheer ! " 



READY AND STEADY. 

A FENIAN NEW-YEAR SONG- (1867). 

EEADY, boys, ready, the morning is breaking. 
Brace up your sinews and stand to your guns ; 
Ireland, the shackles of centuries shaking. 
Calls o'er the ocean for aid to her sons. 
Now, boys, forever Erin's endeavor 

Eeaches its triumph or falls on its bier ; 
Strengthen each soul, be it death-bed or goal. 
You must decide in the dawning new year. 

Steady, boys, steady, no pausing or flinching. 

Comrade or foeman? — your choice must be 
made ; 
Saxon and Celt in a death-grapple clinching. 

Neither has room for a neutral brigade. 
Voices that palter, hearts that may falter. 

There is no welcome or place for you here ; 
Arms but of you men — fearless and true men — 

Strike the last blow in the coming new year. 



186 AN IKISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Ready, boys, ready, with quick self-reliance, 

Victory marches, but never despair ; 
Steady, boys, steady, a loud-mouthed defiance 

Never scared tiger or wolf from its lair. 
Silent, but ready, anxious but steady. 

Lean on your arms till the signal you hear. 
Then, be your story sadness or glory. 

Still, 'twill illumine your country's new year. 



WHY SMITHERS RESIGNED. 

SO you wish to know why Smithers resigned his 
position as head constable of Kilmacswiggin? 
Well, as the night's young, and I'm not particularly 
busy, I don't mind spending half an hour or so in tell- 
ing you the story. 

You see, during the time of the Land League 
troubles, some of tlie landlords round here, knowing 
that they had little reason to expect any overwhelming 
affection from their tenants, and finding their sources of 
income, if not castles in the air, at least rents in the 
clouds, for bad luck to the penny they could collect, 
began to get uneasy and scared, and thought it would 
be a wise thing to have a dozen or so more police in the 
parish, though it's too many of the same streelers were 
quartered on us to begin with. The district, barring 
that the farmers kept their money in their own pockets 
and used strong language when the rent collector called 
on them, was quiet and peaceable, and could have been 
easily managed without a peeler at all, but the land- 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 187 

lords wanted bad to force their rents out of the poor 
peasantry or take their land from them, as they used 
to do in the cruel times before the League stepped in 
and put an extinguisher on their proceedings. 

So, as the people couldn't be tempted to make fools 
of themselves by playing into the land-grabbers' hands 
by such frolics as popping at their agents with old 
blunderbusses from the back of a hedge, or setting fire 
to process servers' hayricks, the landlords began to 
manufacture outrages on their own account. They 
wrote threatening letters to each other by the bushel, 
with skulls, and crossbones, and coffins for date lines, 
and blood, and blasphemy, and murder reeking in every 
sentence, and pikes, and guns, and pistols below the 
signature of " Captain Moonlight " or " Rory of the 
Hills," to show how terribly in earnest they were. Oh, 
they constructed those epistles in the orthodox manner 
recognized by Mr. Trench in his "Recollections of an 
Irish Landlord," and made familiar to the world by the 
regiments of English special correspondents that were 
then roaming and perambulating Ireland like journal- 
istic ghouls or body-snatchers looking for corpses to be 
dissected in the columns of their respective organs. 
They wrote, too, blood-curdling, gruesome, harrowinu" 
narratives of the horrors of life in Kilmacswiggin for 
the London papers, till one of the Orange members 
from the North drew attention in the House to what he 
called the terrible state of aff*airs in that parish, and, 
though Healy and Biggar contradicted his assertions, 
and laughed at his lugubrious forebodings of massacre, 
rapine, blood, and flame if a whole corps cTarmee and a 



188 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

part of the channel squadron wasn't immediately sent to 
occupy the bogs and ditches there, the then chief secre- 
tary, Buckshot Forster, promised to see into the matter, 
and he wrote to the head inspector in Dublin, Col. Hil- 
lier, and Hillier sent a letter down to Smithers that 
made that head constable's ears tingle. He as much as 
told Smithers that if he didn't arrest somebody for 
something or other he might take out his walking 
papers. Of course Smithers was in a quandary. He'd 
willingly have arrested the whole parish, man, woman, 
and child, if he could have found the shadow of an 
excuse, but he couldn't, poor fellow. 

Just at this time it happened that Pat Moran, at the 
far end of the parish, was engaged in a little business 
speculation on his own account, in the shape of a brisk 
trade in the finest poteen that was ever distilled in these 
parts — and that's a big word. The still was away 
somewhere in the mountains, — it may be there yet, so 
I shan't go into geographical details, — and Pat was 
employed as a kind of messenger between the boys 
there and some of the hotel keepers and grocers in the 
towns and villages round who don't believe in contrib- 
uting any more to the British revenue than they can 
help. Maybe he visited me sometimes, and maybe he 
didn't. That's neither here nor there. I may just 
observe that I never pay taxes willingly. You can 
take what you like out of that. 

Some of Pat's neighbors grew envious of the good 
luck he was having, and one day some sleeveen — it 
was never found out who the stag was — came into the 
barracks and told Head Constable Smithers that Pat 



A^ iKiSH CUAZY-QUILT. l89 

Moran had guns and powder and shot hid away in his 
old cabin. The sly rogue knew that if lie complained 
to Smithers that it w^as merely illicit whiskey Pat had, 
the head constable wouldn't give a thraneen about the 
matter, and as like as not would let Pat alone. But 
the mention of contraband material of war worked up 
Smithers like a touch of electricity. Why, if he could 
manage to seize a few rifles and a cartridge or two of 
dynamite, his fortune was made, his position assured. 
There was no position he might not attain. He would 
succeed Clifford Lloyd. He might be made a K. C. B. 
Dim visions of a peerage even floated through his brain. 

In five minutes he was en route for Pat's, with a 
dozen constabulary men at his back. How Pat found 
out he was coming I can't say ; but he did find out while 
Smithers was still half a mile away. Pat had a hurried 
consultation with his mother. He had no time to shift 
a keg of poteen which was in the house, but they hit 
upon a ruse which might succeed, and at any rate 
couldn't make things worse. They wiieeled the keg 
of whiskey under the bed in the back room, and in 
another minute Pat was lying on the bed with his head 
enveloped in a Tara hill of bandages, awaiting the 
crisis. 

The crisis came. So did the police. In fact, they 
came together. The search began. The peelers ex- 
plored the teapot and kettle for rifles, and seemed dis- 
appointed when they found no artillery in the skillet. 
They sounded the hearthstone, analyzed the cradle, 
held a sort of post-mortem examination on the furni- 
ture, and poked the roof so eflfectually with their bay- 



190 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

onets that it resembled the lid of a pepper-box. The 
commander went so far as to make the youngest of the 
force ascend the chimney. He found nothing there 
'but soot. However, he brought enough of that back 
with him to satisfy his most ardent desires. 

Then Smithers prepared to enter the back room, but 
the old woman clung to his arm and tearfully beseeched 
him not to do so. 

" Ha ! ha ! " cried the enterprising officer, bursting 
the door in w^ith his foot, " I smell a rat," and he rushed 
into the room, where the first object to meet his gaze 
was a head raised languidly from the pillow, and poul- 
ticed and bandaged to the size of a champion squash or 
watermelon. 

" Oh, wirra ! wirra ! " sobbed the old woman ; " you've 
kilt my boy. He's very bad with small-pox, ochone ! 
ochorie ! and the doctor said only this blissid mornin' 
that he wasn't to be wuck at all, at all. It only bruck 
on him last night, an' it's a beautiful pock you have, 
avick machree ; and now — " 

But that head constable had leaped ten feet backward 
clean out of the house, and w^as licking all previous 
fracing records up the boreen, \Yith his handkerchief to 
his nose, and his followers tearing after him like a 
pack of hungry fox-hounds. Talk of Myers, the great 
Yankee runner ! He would have been left in the cold 
that day. 

You may be sure it wasn't long before the whole 
story of how Moran fooled the head constable went the 
rounds of the country. It came to Smithers' own ears 
at last, and from that hour he was an altered man. He 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. l91 

■would retire into the woods to vent his feelings, and 
people who heard him sometimes say that his oaths 
would lift the hair on the scalp of an Egyptian mummy. 
The more he brooded, the more he cursed. There never 
was a curse, English, Irish, or American, that he didn't 
get hold of, and he invented such a lot of brand- 
new, original, comic, pathetic, eccentric, square, round, 
oblong, elliptical, severely plain, and highly ornamented 
or convoluted profane pyrotechnics that a perfume of 
sulphur and brimstone seemed to hang around his con- 
versation. The habit so crept upon him that when he 
wished at last to shake it off, he couldn't. His tongue 
had grown so accustomed to decorative blasphemy that 
it could utter nothing else. It became a matter of 
anxious consideration to him how he was to eliminate 
from his conversation the picturesque adjectives it would 
under ordinary circumstances have taken him thirty years 
to accumulate. He consulted a friendly sub. " Smith," 
said he, "I have a [powerful expletive not to be found 
in any polite guide to conversation] bad habit." 

" Only one," said his brother official ; "that's nothing. 
A man who has been on the force ten years and has 
only acquired one bad habit, has wasted his opportuni- 
ties." 

"Well, but this is one that is likely to get me into a 
blank blank [double-barrelled adjective] muss in so- 
ciety some fine day. You see I can't speak ten words 
without cursing. If I can, — my eyes ! " [ophthalmic 
operation not recognized in modern surgery]. 

"Ah," said Harvey Duff 2 ; "you must repress that 
custom. It's low." 



192 AN IRISH CRAZY-QTJlLT. 

" How the — [distant region occasionally alluded to 
in sermons and theological disquisitions] can I?" 

His colleague cogitated. When a policeman cogi- 
tates, there are enough scintillations of intellect flashing 
round to illuminate the interior of an Egyptian pyra- 
mid. The result of his meditation was his advice to 
Smithers to take a pocket-book, and every time he 
transgressed to take a note of the offence. In twelve 
hours he had filled up two three-hundred-page memo- 
randum books, and used up a dozen and a half of pen- 
cils. It became irksome pottering round with a note- 
book in one hand and a stick of lead in the other entering 
everlasting ejaculations ; he wore the skin off his fingers, 
and, besides, he couldn't keep up with himself, and he 
missed cataloguing a few score emphatic expressions 
every five minutes. He adopted another plan. He 
arranged with his wife that every time he articulated 
forbidden sounds he should hand her over a penny. He 
provided himself with £5 in coppers the first day of the 
arrangement, but he hadn't a red cent by noon, and in 
three days he had parted with all his ready cash, made 
over his next year's income, and didn't even own the 
boots he stood in. Then he agreed with his better half 
that she should pluck a hair out of his head every time 
he offended, and now if there's a more bald-headed man 
to be found on this side the day of judgment, I'm will- 
ing to turn cannibal, and eat him. 

His habit attracted the attention of his superiors at 
last, when his report began to resemble his verbal 
utterances, and tliey reprimanded him sharply. He 
replied in a letter that is preserved in the official 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 193 

archives as a sample of what the English language is 
capable of. The reading of it drove two Castle author- 
ities mad, and sent the third into a galloping consump- 
tion. Well, that's how Smithers left the force. Strange 
story, ain't it? 



THE CHARGE OF THE GUARDS AT LONDON TOWER. 

BY ALFRED TENNYSON'S GHOST. 

GHASTLY white with affright, 
Down stairs they thundered, 
Peelers and grenadiers — 
Nearly a hundred. 

Out of doors shrieking loud 
Rushed the scared hundred, 

They had no wish to be 
Blown up or sundered. 

Crash ! went a bomb o'erhead, 

"Oh, Lord !" each bearskin said, 

Wildly in flight they sped — 
Disgruntled hundred. 

Bang ! went that bombshell near, 
Were they o'ercome with fear? 
You bet your boots they were — 
All of the hundred ; 



* At the explosion which took place in the Tower of London on 
Jan. 23, 1885, the Grenadier Guards and the Police distinguished 
themselves by their frantic efforts to escape from the building. 



194 AN IRISH CRAZr- QUILT. 

Theirs not to question why 
Eoof soared aloft to sky — 
Theirs but to cut and fly 
Sensible hundred. 

Women to right of them, 
Women to left of them, 
Children in front of them 

Fainted or wondered ; 
But they were trained too well — 
They knew what meant that shell, 
So with a gruesome yell. 
Head over heels, pell-mell. 

Scattered the hundred. 

Did they flash sabres bare 
Out on the trembling air? 
No, they just left them there. 

There to be plundered ; 
And through the struggling mass. 
Matron and babe and lass. 
Plunged and strove hard to pass. 
Choking and gasping — 

Ah, horrified hundred. 

Glass smashed to right of them. 
Beams flew to left of them, 
Walls gaped in front of them, 

Shattered and sundered ; 
All round the citadel. 
Stormed by that awful shell, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 195 

Plaster and brickbats fell 
Down on their heads in storms. 
Oh, it was worse than hell ; 
Out over prostrate forms 

Charged all the hundred. 

When shall the record fade 
Of the quick time they made ? 

All the world wondered. 
Greyhound or Arab steed 
Could not excel the speed 

Of that swift hundred. 



AN ADDRESS TO SLAVES.* 

Helots of Ireland ! Bow down to the stranger ; 

Bondsmen and serfs ! bend the sycophant knee ; 
Forget the brave hearts who have faced every danger, 

Death, dungeon, and exile that ye might be free ! 
Be Emmet forgotten, Tone's story unspoken ; 

Let the o:reen shamrocks wither above their lone 
graves. 
Or should the last sleep of such heroes be broken 

Let it be by the shouts that proclaim ye are slaves. 

* In April, 1885, the Prince of Wales paid a visit to Ireland. On 
the morning of his arrival a placard containing the verses above 
was found posted on every dead-wall in the cities and villages of 
Ireland. The poem had previously appeared in an American paper. 



196 AN IRISH CRAZT-QUILT. 

Aye, shout ! Though oppression stalks over the old 
land ; 

Though thousands are leaving your desolate isle. 
Aye, shout ! Till your cheers tell the world ye have 
sold land. 

Faith, honor, and truth, for a Prince's false smile. 
The iron has entered 3''0ur souls, and forever 

May it brand you as craven and false to your race ; 
May the years that roll by bring oblivion never 

To cloak your dishonor or shroud your disgrace. 

Shout, shout, puny slaves, though each banner that 
dances 
Round the path of the Prince is the alien red. 
Crack your throats, though the gleam of yon glittering 
lances 
Is dimmed by the blood of your innocent dead. 
Kiss the orround at his feet, thou2:h the soldiers that 
guard him. 
Your fathers and kinsmen have ruthlessly slain, 
Be dogs to the last, and like mongrels reward him, 
By coating in slime every link of your chain. 

But cowardly serfs, in your crouching remember 

The people and ye are no longer the same. 
And every heart where one flickering ember 

Of manhood's ablaze has contempt for your shame. 
Then go, join the ranks of the knaves who have bartered 

God's birthright of freedom for titles and gold. 
The heart of the nation beats still for the martyred. 

Though their glory and cause be unsung and untold. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 197 

When ye, abject hounds, and your cheers shall have 
perished, 
When the Prince and his courtiers shall sleep in the 
grave, 
Their name and their fame and their work shall be 
cherished 
While one Irish bosom is faithful and brave. 
In honorless tombs all their foes will be rotten, 

When the cause that they died for, triumphant and 
grand. 
Shines out, o'er the tombstones of princes forgotten, 
In the sunrise of Liberty bathing our land. 



EXPLOITS OF AN IRISH REPORTER. 

FOR enterprise, facility of invention and expedient, 
and the ability to " get there " in spite of every 
difficulty and obstacle, the American newspaper man is 
a century ahead of his European brother ; but I know 
of one Irish knight of the stylograph who could give 
even a Yankee points, if we are to believe his friends. 

Brian has been known to take notes in a rain-storm 
with a sharp-pointed scissors on the ribs of his um- 
brella. 

When his leg was broken in a boiler explosion, he 
chronicled the event on the bandages. 

When he had to disguise himself as a bandsman at 
an Orange demonstration, he took down the chairman's 
speech in the mouth of his trombone. 

He sent a graphic account of an Arctic expedition 



198 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

engraven on blocks of ice from Smith's Sound, and he 
once pencilled the story of a railway collision on the 
wooden leg of a survivor. He forgot to mention how 
the mangled victim was accommodated with an artificial 
limb so soon after the disaster, but he never bothers 
his head about such minor details. 

But his greatest phonographic achievement was in 
Central Africa a few years ago. King Mtesa, the 
dusky potentate discovered by Stanley, picked up 
from his European guests, among other accomplish- 
ments, the art of making speeches. It was a new, a 
delicious recreation to the savage soul. Twice a month 
he assembled his warriors, and held forth, and the ebon 
Secretary of State who failed to ejaculate the Central 
African substitute for " hear, hear," at the proper mo- 
ment, w^as served up for luncheon on the conclusion of 
the speech. 

Brian heard of this. It became the one burning 
ambition of his soul to take a shorthand note of the 
Boston-baked-beans-color orator. He set out for Tan- 
ganyika to carry out his project. Accompanied by a 
dozen sons of night he penetrated the African jungle, 
swam its turgid rivers, evaded its hungry tribes, 
escaped its fierce animals, and after weeks of adventure 
and suffering, with his faithful followers, reached the 
king's kraal the evening before one of that monarch's 
speeches. 

He had been scalped, had all his teeth drawn, lost a 
few toes, been once half boiled, and on another occa- 
sion baked nearly to a sweet and toothsome brown ; 
still he had survived. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 199 

But, alas ! he had lost his pencil and note-book, and 
these indispensable adjuncts of caligraphic civilization 
were unknown in Mtesa's territory since Stanley had 
left. 

Our reporter, however, had an inventive intellect 
not to be thwarted by such trifling obstacles. He 
hunted up a chalk ridge, and when the Cicero in jet 
addressed his subjects, Brian planted his Zanzibari 
attendants on their hands and knees, and took the 
speech in chalk upon their naked backs. 

Mtesa, in return for the promise of a copy of the 
paper containing the speech, furnished the stenographer 
and his animated note-books with an escort to the coast, 
and triumph would have crowned Brian's effort but for 
the most striking passages of the oration being lost 
through one of the blacks sitting down on a wet bank 
before he had been transcribed ! 



A POLITICAL LESSON SPOILED. 

HE was a Boston teacher, and of course had an 
intellect superior to the cut-and-dry theories of 
instruction that were followed by the common herd of 
schoolmasters. He believed in object-lessons ; in illus- 
trations that should catch the young idea on the fly, as 
it were. Thus, when he wanted to fix in the memories 
of the youthful scholars the titles of the principal reign- 
ing monarchs and rulers of Europe, he didn't keep them 
for half an hour each day iterating monotonously, " the 
Queen of England," "the President of France," "the 



200 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 

King of Italy," "the Emperor of Germany," "the Sul- 
tan of Turkey," and "the Czar of Russia." Not he. 
He elevated his pupils to a higher sense, a more indi- 
vidual appreciation, of the majesties of the Continent. 
He told Mike, the saloon keeper's son, to know himself 
in future as the French President ; Franz Schweibiere 
became Emperor of Germany ; he bestowed royal hon- 
ors on allhls most promising pupils, and he felt proudly 
conscious that he had planted firmly in their minds, as 
part of their own identity, the knowledge of the sov- 
ereigns who are the arbiters of the Old World's des- 
tiny. We draw a veil over his emotions when on a 
recent unhappy morning the King of Italy held up a 
greasy hand and piped out, "Please, sir, de Sultan of 
Turkey won't be here to-day. De Emperor of Russia 
hit him a smash in de eye last night, and blinded him ! " 



THE LION'S LAMENTATION. 

THEY are marching on Herat, half a million 
men, or more, 
Over the frontier they're swarming ; 
And they do not seem to mind at all my remonstrative 
roar, 
But grin as if its melody were charming ; 
Turk and Italian, Teuton and Gaul, 
Friends of the past, where, where are ye all? 
Great Patience ! are ye laughing at the poor old lion's 
flill? 
Really, the prospect is alarming. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 201 

'Tis useless boasting now we can whip them one to 
ten, 

Woe is me ! the fact is quite contrary ; 
We niio'ht when "Enolish" soldiers came from Irish 
hill and glen, 

But there's no recruiting now in Tipperary, 
No, nor from Antrim downward to Clare, 
From seaboard of Gal way across to Kildare, ^ 
Can I find a single Irishman to help me anywhere, 

Except he be a Cory don or Carey. 

Oh dear, oh kind, oh glorious, oh darling Uncle Sam, 

Am I not your father and your mother? 
Pray listen to the bleatings of the martyred British 
lamb. 
Help, brave soul, oh help, before I smother. 
Irving and Arnold your culture will bless, 
All the dudes of London your image will caress, 
Oscar go across again to teach you how to dress, 
And we'll be the world to one another. 

Bennett, Smalley, don't you hear the marching going 
on? 

The tramp my Indian provinces is shaking. 
Greycoats from the Ural and Cossacks from the Don, 

Is it any wonder that I'm quaking? 
O Lord ! the tortures, the terrors I feel ! 
Even my roar has been changed to a squeal, 
And — my heart to palsy, my very blood congeal — 

That d— d old Irish wolf-dog is awaking ! 



202 AN IRISH CHAZY-QUILT, 



MEMORIAL ODE 

TO THE IRISH DEAD AVHO WERE SLAUGHTERED DURING THE 
FIFTY YEARS' REIGN OF VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 

WE meet to-night to greet a name 
Symbolical for fifty years 
Of England's guilt and England's shame, 
Of Ireland's blood and Ireland's tears. 
To mingle with the empty glee 

Of laugh and cheer from English throat, 
A new tone in this Jubilee, — 
A strong, discordant, Irish note. 

What has she done for us or ours ; 

What wrong redressed ; relieved what pain ; 
That in her garlanding of flowers 

We should conceal our Irish chain? 
When on the dreary roadside lying 
Were babe and mother faint and dying, 
When heaped were nameless Irish graves, 
When Irish dead paved ocean's waves. 
When every blast 
That swept the mast 
Of fever ship was moaning, sighing 
The story of an awful crime 
That rino^ino: down the aisles of Time 
Has filled the universe with song — 
A deathless dirsre of Ireland's wronoj — - 



What act of mercy, gentle, humau, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 203 

What deed of grace to prove her woman, 
What sign gave she that Irish true man 

Could treasure in his heart to be 

A token of her Jubilee ? 

She came when but one spring had spread 

Its buds above our dark decay, 
Around, among, between the dead, 

Her idle, pompous journey lay. 
She saw a million graves, but shed 

No tear to wash the sin away. 
Before or since what ear hath heard 

In all our years of dark eclipse 
One feeble protest, or a word 

Of pity from her queenly lips. 
Nay, Avhen our fearsome famine wail 

Pierced e'en an Orient monarch's soul, 
And he stretched hand to save the Gael, 

Her jealous pride returned his dole. 
For she could watch the infant die upon its mother's 

shriveled breast, 
But could not bear a stranger's gem to dim the jewels 
on her crest. 

A faithful mother — so the bear 

That rends the bleating lamb apart, 
And brings it with her cubs to share, 
Betrays a fond, maternal heart. 
And oh, how many Irish lambs torn from their weep- 
ing mother's side 
By hunger's pangs in roofless homes can mock Vic- 
toria's mother-pride. 



204 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

A faithful wife — from prison tomb appeals the strangled 

Irish voice 
Of father fond and husband true, as even Albert — 

poor Myles Joyce.* 
And many an Irish orphan sobs, and many a widow 

shrieks in pain. 
At memory of the loved ones lost — butchered in this 

half-century's reign. 

Could a million of unknown Irish graves yield up the 

victims of landlord wrath ; 
Could the Angel of Life breathe into the bones that 

bleach the Atlantic's lonely path ; 
Could the dead be recalled from the prison clay and 

ordered back from the scaftbld's gloom ; 
Could we clothe with living flesh and blood the inmates 

of madhouse and union tomb ; 
A parade that would stretch from Pole to Pole, from 

East to West over every sea, 
Would shadow to littleness scarcely seen the fools who 

march in her Jubilee. 

Then by the memory of all who fell in holy Ireland's 

light. 
Through Famine's pangs, by steel or rope, we lift our 

hands and swear to-night 
To keep our banner still aloft, through calm and storm, 

through good and ill, 
Until the blaze of freedom's sun illumines every Irish hill. 

* A victim of English law, whose innocence was proven after he 
had been executed. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 205 

Let those who will pay tribute still to alien laws and 

foreign throne, 
Ireland shall see a Jubilee and sing Te Deums of her 

own. 



AN ORANGE ORATION. 

IN no country in either the civilized or the barbaric 
world can we find the counter-type of the Irish 
Orangeman. In France, Frenchmen are Frenchmen, 
whatever may be their religious faith. The Catholic 
from Bavaria fought side by side with the Prussian 
Lutheran, when German independence was assailed. 
When the White Czar summons his legions to the de- 
fence of the Russian Empire, the peasant who follows the 
tenets of the Greek Church takes his place under the 
eagle standard alongside the persecuted believer in the 
faith of Rome. The English Catholics are as steadfast 
in their support of the " meteor flag of Old England " as 
any of the believers in the motley creeds of that much- 
religious nation — Methodists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, 
Presbyterians, Unitarians, Baptists, Episcopalians, or 
Jumpers. In Ireland alone in this tolerant nineteenth 
century do we find religious bigotry so ineradical, so 
irrepressible, so stupid as to be beyond the reach of per- 
suasion and the voice of reason. A condemnation of 
Orangeism is unnecessary, but a description of one of its 
votaries may be interesting. Nobody falls in love with 
a two-headed chimpanzee or a double-tailed baboon, 
but they are valuable accessories to a dime museum. 
By and by the Orangeman will find his natural place 



206 AN IRISH CRA2Y-QUILT. 

in a side-show, but in the mean time, for tlie benefit 
of future Barnums and Forepaughs, we will sketch the 
prominent features, personal and historical, of one of 
the tribe. 

Billy Macshiver was born in one of those out-of-the 
way villages in Antrim, into which neither intelligence 
nor common sense has so far penetrated. His father was 
the hero of many a fierce sectarian strife, as the count- 
less bruises he bore upon his venerable scalp could 
well testify. From his earliest infancy Billy was taught 
hatred of everything connected with Catholicity. He 
was told that the cross was a symbol of superstition, a 
Catholic church the temple of Lucifer, a Catholic priest 
a stray fiend who had escaped from Limbo, and the 
"Papists" generally a lot of poor, benighted idiots, 
especially created by a benign Providence to afford 
skulls for himself and his confreres to crack. He 
learned that England was the most Protestant nation 
in the world, and consequently the greatest; that the 
" Boyne Water " was the grandest musical composition 
of this or any other age ; and that the Rev. E. R. Kane, 
a notorious Orange firebrand, was a second St. Paul. 
He had been taught to shun everything green as he 
would the small-pox — there was only one color for a 
devout Christian to patronize — orange. God had not 
decorated the trees and fields with orange, because he 
had reserved that beautiful tint for a chosen few, and 
didn't wish it to be too common. Of course, when 
Billy reached the years of maturity he joined the clan 
in whose ranks his father's head had so often been ban- 
daged. He became an Orangeman of the deepest purple 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 207 

dye. He mounted Orange lilies, natural and artificial, 
resplendent and faded, in the button-hole nearest his 
heart, on every available opportunity. He learned to 
play "Croppers, lie down" on the concertina, and to 
master the mysteries of the jew's-harp to the stirring 
anthem of " Protestant Boys." He led insane proces- 
sions on every 12th of July, and won endless glory by 
" knocking out " an old woman who declined to shout 
" To h — with the Pope" at his modest request. 

He is now grand master of an Orange lodge. He is 
a skilful rhetorician, of course. I quote his last 12th 
of July speech, to show the stuff that awakens the en- 
thusiasm of his class : — 

** Brethren — We have met once more to commem- 
orate to-night the memory of the great, the glorious, 
the pious, and the — the — the Orange-headed William, 
and in rising to propose the toast of his immortal mem- 
ory, I — I — as a matter of fact I — I — get upon my 
feet. (Cheers.) At no time in the history of Orange- 
ism did there exist a greater necessity to — to — to, in 
short — drink his memory — that is to say, to drink — to 
drink — to — oh, you know what I mean. (Tumultuous 
applause.) The papishes are abroad like roaring lions 
seeking whom they may devour. Shall they swallow 
us? (Loud cries of ' No.') Our Church has been dis- 
established, and Mr. Gladstone has kissed the Pope's 
toe. (Shame.) Yes, shame ; but are there not thou- 
sands of Orangemen prepared to wipe out with their 
toes — their big toes — upon the most fleshy part of 
Gladstone's carcass this — this — this insult to Chris- 
tianity ? (Loud applause.) They have put down, to a 



208 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

certain extent, our gay and festive and hilarious gather- 
ings, which used to strike terror to the souls — of — 
of — well, they struck terror all round to somebody or 
other. (Hear, hear.) The tyrants won't allow us to 
remove the idols from Israel by wrecking any more 
nunneries. The despots forbid us to let the light of 
the gospel into Papists' heads with bludgeons any 
longer. (Groans.) The love of God has departed from 
the English Cabinet, and their brutal mercenaries for- 
bid believers in the Word to damn the Pope for less 
than forty shillings. (Hisses.) But still, my breth- 
ren, we can drink the pious memory of the sainted 
William for threepence-halfpenny a glass (loud cheers), 
and whilst we bear the name of men shall a threepenny 
bit stand between us and our noble duty? (Shouts of 
Never and No surrender.) Gentlemen, fill your glasses 
with whiskey and Boyne water. Here's to the glorious 
memory of the glorious William ; here's to the glorious 
constitution ho gave us ; here's to the glorious Boyne 
water, and, I may add, the glorious whiskey with which 
to-night it is allied ; here's to the glorious Queen of 
England, the glorious mother of a glorious baker's 
dozen ; here's to glorious John Brown, the pillar of the 
state and the true prototype of Martin Luther ; to thun- 
der with the Pope, and hell's bells, artillery, bombshells, 
prison cells, death knells, and a variegated assortment 
of diversified yells ring, swing, cling, and ding forever 
and ever amen in the ears of Davitt and Parnell." 
(Frantic applause and several free fights.) 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 209 



SONG OF KING ALCOHOL. 

WHAT Kaiser, Czar, or King since the birthday 
of the world 
Had a rule so universal as I claim ? 
What conquering banner yet was so far and wide 
unfurled 
As my ensign of destruction and of shame? 
My burning fetters bind every race of human kind ; 

My dominion rules their bodies not alone, 
But heart and soul and brain are encircled by my chain, 

And their future, as their present, is my own. 
Then clink-a-clink the bottle and chink-a-chink the 

glass ! 
Send the tankard round, imps, and let the goblet 

pass ! 
Ply the fools with whiskey and fill them up with rum. 
Till fiends are hoarse with laughter, and angels stricken 
dumb. 

Talk not to me of Nero, that ancient Eoman ass ; 

His tortured slaves in death at last were free. 
But the serf who bears the sway of bottle or of glass 

Belongs for all eternity to me. 
The bravest man who broke a human tyrant's yoke. 

If he once began to worship at my shrine 
Would submit strength, courage, all of his manhood to 
my thrall, 

Lose truth and pluck and honor, and be mine. 



210 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Then pass the poison freely, circle round the drink, 
Do not give the drunkard time to even' think. 
In a stupid slumber let his conscience dwell, 
Till, too late, ha ! ha ! it awakens up in hell ! 

Despots oft are hated : it is not so with me — 

Homage pay my bondsmen for their pains ; 
Common helots struggle madly to be free. 

Mine lie down and hug their bitter chains. 
My triumph through the years is told in blood and 
tears, 

On the scaffold, in the dungeon^s dreary gloom. 
I whet the murderer's knife — rob mother, children, 
wife — 

And built my horrid throne upon the tomb. 
Then let the red wine gurgle, let the whiskey flow, 
Satan turns the hose on, for the demons know 
God and heaven are lost to the fools who sink 
Underneath the sway of that cruel monarch, Drink ! 



CONTRARY COGNOMENS. 

IF you wanted Fry to cook a chop, you'd find your- 
self mistaken, 
And pills, not rashers, form the stock of enterprising 

Bacon ; 
Taylor goes in for selling boots, whilst Butler's a 

musician. 
And Cooper couldn't hoop a tub with any expedition ; 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 211 

Long's only four foot six, but Short's miraculously 
long ; 

Strong's dying of consumption, but the Weekes con- 
tinue strong. 

It's strange to find that Butcher is a vegetarian, 

That Brewer is teetotal, and Goodchild a bad old man. 



Parsons is a publican, and Church an unbeliever. 

Lawless a solicitor, Truelove a gay deceiver ; 

Steel deals in soft goods. Draper's ware is advertised 

as hard. 
And Gamble would be shocked at sight of domino or 

card ; 
Wright's wrong as oft as any one, Dullman is smart and 

witty. 
Miss Fortune is the luckiest young lady in the city ; 
Gray's black. Black's red. Green's brown, and Gay is 

always on the mope, 
Leggett is doomed to crutches, and old Curley bald as 

soap. 



AN /ESTHETIC WOOING. 

ANGELINA Seraphina ^ 
Wilhelmina Murphy, 
See on knees here Ebenezer 

Julius Caesar Durphy. 
I've forsaken vows I've taken 

To a dozen ladies, 
Eose and Ella, Annabella, 
And Mirella Bradys. 



212 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

What to me now e'er can be now 

Hippolita Flanagan ? 
Or sweet Dora Leonora 

Otherwise O'Branagan ? 
Or that Hebe Flora Phoebe 

Anastatia Hoolahan ? 
Or Miranda Alexandra 

May Amanda Woolahan ? 

Roderio^o Paul Dieo^o 

Burke may try his part again ; 
Or Bernardo Leonardo 

Furey seek your heart again. 
But be mine, love, as I'm thine, love ; 

Just espouse my cause, my dear, 
And I swear Pll give our heir 

A name to break your jaws, my dear ! 



THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM. 

HE slumbered in a quiet sleep beneath Heaven's 
sparkhng dome, 
A man without a single friend, a wretch without a home ; 
And there he lay, a spectacle to every passer-by — 
The only roof that sheltered him, the star-bespangled 
sky! 

Hungry and ill, he'd left the town to roam he knew not 

where ; 
Hungry and tired, he slept at last, forgetful of his care ; 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 213 

Forgetful of the agony he'd suffered all the day, 
He slumbered now, and care and woe at last had flown 
away. 

He dreamt that he was standing where so long ago he 

stood ; 
Again he heard the cheering of a mighty multitude ; 
lie was receiving once again the prize his skill had 

won — 
He heard his father blessing God for having such a son ! 

His fancy changed : he dreamt he stood beneath the 

rustling trees, 
Which seemed to shake with laughter at the antics of 

the breeze. 
A thousand flowers were 'neath his feet, rich, beautiful 

and rare. 
As he was whispering love-tales to a maiden twice as 

fair. 

He saw her startled attitude, he marked the rising 

blush, 
He saw the tears of pleasure from her lovely eyelids 

gush, 
He saw the joy and happiness she sought not to repress ; 
And with a thrill he heard again the softly whispered 
Yes.' 



<fV^^ ?> 



His dream was changed : again he stood — and she was 

by his side, 
Within the little village church to claim her as his bride ; 



214 AN IKISII CRAZY-QUILT. 

Joy thrills his heart with happiness, his eyes with 

pleasure gleam, 
When, hark ! that noise ! he wakes again to find it but 

a dream ! 

The wild wind moans in sorrow, and the rain begins to 
fall ; 

Where are the pictures of his dream? They've van- 
ished one and all. 

The lightnings flash, the thunders roll and rattle over- 
head, 

And the very sky seems weeping o'er the joy forever 
fled ! 

He tries to rise, but, weak and faint, he cannot stir a 

limb ; 
Before his dazzled, weakened eyes the trees begin to 

swim. 
He hears another rattle, and another rattle still. 
And now through every nerve there runs a strange and 

fearful thrill ! 

A sudden pang has twitched his heart, has robbed him 

of his breath ; 
He gasps a moment, then he falls asleep, — but now in 

death ! 
The lightning struck him lying there, and severed life's 

last link, 
And the stars alone are weeping for the victim of the 

drink. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 215 



FREDERICK'S FOLLY. 



IN a popular Dublin suburb, not quite a day's forced 
march from Kathmines, — which, as every tourist 
in Ireland knows, is the Back Bay of the Hibernian 
metropolis, — there boarded, lodged, and sent out his 
washing last Christmas an fiestlietic and highly "cul- 
chawed " young gentleman who had come all the way 
from London to take up a position in that branch of 
the civil service which hangs its banners from the outer 
walls of the Custom House, and receives for idling four 
hours a day whatever filthy Irish lucre may be pre- 
sented in the shape of income. To spare the har- 
rowed feelings of his afflicted relatives, I shall expose 
to a heartless world only his baptismal appellation, 
Frederick. In the clammy tomb of the miserable past 
I shall bury the remainder of his official signature. 

Fred came, he saw, but he didn't conquer, for alas ! 
while he saw he was also seen, and his personal charms 
were not of a nature to strike his landlady's daughter, 
a neat little, sweet little, captivating, sparkling Irish 
maiden, with the amorous feelings that his ardent soul 
desired. But on this Christmas eve of 1882, fortune 
had smiled upon Fred with a quarter's salary, and he 
determined to add such embellishments to his face and 
form as should entrance and fill with rapture even a 
less susceptible heart than beat within the tender bosom 
of Norah Flaherty. He would pave the way by a 
Christmas present. He had a work-box. He would 



216 AN IKISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

fill it with all the little knick-knacks dear to feminine 
weakness. But it was rather shabby. He would var- 
nish it. Hamilton & Long, of Grafton Street, sold a 
celebrated composition warranted to change the plain- 
est deal kitchen table into a highly ornamental walnut 
article-de-luxe, fit to adorn the library of a duke or the 
boudoir of a countess. 

He left home to secure that miraculous compound. 
He secured it. Having time on hand, he resolved to 
devote it to the adornment of his person. He dropped 
into a barber's temple in Wicklow Street. Now, in the 
British Isles, you cannot visit a barber for a five-cent 
shave without being subjected by him to eloquent se- 
ductions to purchase three or four dollars' worth of 
hair-dyes, washes, cosmetics, and fiice powders. Fred- 
erick's barber was like the rest of his insular tribe. 
He had barely got his devastating scissors ready for 
action on our hero's cranium before he ventured to sug- 
gest that Fred's hair was not — well, not quite a fash- 
ionable color. As the locks in question were of the 
decidedly martial color usually associated with the 
uniform of the English line or the— hem — nether gar- 
ments of the French infantry, Frederick assented. 

"You should try our hair-dye. Balsam of Peru," said 
the tonsorial artist. " It will make your hair as black 
as the hob of — I mean as the raven's wing." 

Fred was about, like an editor, to decline with 
thanks, when he thought of Norah, pretty little Norah, 
and in a fatal moment he invested in the dye. 

"Your mustache ain't quite a miracle," suggested the 
knight of the scissors. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 217 

It wasn't quite a miracle. It was a somewhat dilapi- 
dated, disjointed sort of a mustache — what there was 
of it. It grew in stray patches and odd hairs, with 
five minutes' desert intervals for reflection betvveen the 
stray oases of tufts and vegetation. Fred mournfully 
indorsed the coiffeur's opinion. 

" Ah, try our Formula. It would grow whiskers on 
a billiard ball or a beard on a foundation stone* with a 
single applicatiou. Only a shilling." 

A bottle of Formula found its way into Frederick's 
pocket. 

"Those hairs on your nose don't remarkably add to 
the striking beauty of your classic features," once 
more insinuated the demon of the lather-pot. 

They didn't. It was strange, but Norah had made 
a precisely similar remark. In fact, that capillary ad- 
dition to his proboscis was one of the principal barriers 
between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed 
with his evil genius. 

" You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a 
clothes brush as bare as a smoothing iron. Costs a 
mere trifle. Only two shillings." 

Alas ! He took the Depilatory. 

" You're not a painter?" queried the inquisitive fiend 
of the curlino^-tono^s. 

No, he wasn't. 

"Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you'd been eating 
yellow ochre to-day. Natural color of your teeth, I 
suppose ? " 

Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections 
were becoming monotonous. However, he admitted 



218 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

that the speculator who bought his teeth to retail as 
imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a fortune 
by the investment. 

"You really ought to take a bottle of our Fhiid 
Dentifrice. Brush your teeth every night with a few 
drops, and in a short time ivory would look gloomy 
beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap. 
Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included." 

Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the posses- 
sion of the magic talismans which Avere to transform 
him into an Adonis, he left the hair dresser's and made 
his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had 
arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, 
ejaculating every now and then en route, " Won't little 
Norah be surprised ? " much to the bewilderment of the 
passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. 
He was so elated with visions of conquest that he " set 
'em up " twice. Then another fellow set 'em up. In 
fact, they set 'em up more or less for about two hours. 
It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the 
last reviver, in response to a query about the popula- 
tion ot Shanghai, he replied, inanely, "Won't little 
Norah be surprised?" When shaking hands for the 
seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he vol- 
unteered the mystifying information that little Norah 
wouldn't know him in the morning. He even pro- 
pounded the problem about Norah's astonishment to 
the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic 
personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of 
the lady of the house when his Bacchanalian passenger 
should be deposited on the domestic doorstep, replied 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 219 

emphatically, " I should rather think so ! " upon which 
Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively. 

When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far- 
seeing landlady, that Roman matron, knowing Fred's 
weakness for reading in bed, but doubting his capacity 
for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution 
of supplying him with a brevity of a candle some 
ninety per cent, below Griffith's valuation. When, in 
the solitude of his two-pair b.ick, Fred gazed upon the 
diminutive specimen of the chandler's art, he felt that 
there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beauti- 
fying treasures on the table, read the directions, secured 
the tooth-brush, divested himself of his outer clothing, 
and prepared for action. 

At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a 
gasp, like the warning sob of fate, the candle went out ! 

For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up 
a row for more composite? No. The Gorgon of the 
house might suspect something. Besides, he knew 
where each wonderful phial lay. To work ! to work ! 
Won't little Norah be surprised ? Won't he whelm those 
conceited Irish rivals of his with envy and chagrin ? 

He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five 
minutes' determined friction. He seized the tooth- 
brush, and, saturating that toilet requisite w^ith Fluid 
Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his jaws ached. 
He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Bal- 
sam of Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it 
until his head felt like a sponge. And then with lov- 
ing hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He 
tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an 



220 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

imperial ? Why not ? He traced the imperial artist-' 
ically out. And now, his task of decoration complete, 
he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, " Won't 
little Nora be surprised ? " sank peacefully to slumber 
— to dream he had Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, 
the mustachios of D'Artagnan the Musketeer, and the 
nose of an Adonis. 

Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for 
an hour or two when Frederick awoke. The top of 
his head felt queer — that last toddy, no doubt. He 
was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the 
mustache. Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs 
in the nameless appendages of civilization he rushed to 
the looking-glass. And then there rang out upon the 
morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power 
howl that made the matutinal milkman drop his cans 
in the gutter and settled the last lingering doubts of a 
stray cur in the street, which was meditating madness, 
for the electrified canine Avanderer went for that inde- 
fatigable officer Q 3|^, and helped himself to a Christmas 
breakfast, composed of a square foot of blue cloth and 
a few ounces of metropolitan police manhood. The 
astounded constable started for the nearest druggist's, 
and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over 
an old lady with a parcel of chamomile and poppy- 
heads, and so alarmed the salesman that he could only 
express his feelings by vociferating " Fire ! " at the top 
of his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect 
upon the other assistant, who was swilling the snow- 
slushy footway in front, that he promptly turned the 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 221 

nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched 
forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy- 
heads, chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four 
gross of pills, and a varied assortment of drugs into 
the back premises, where he bombarded them for ten 
minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged 
in wild and dripping confusion. 

That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into 
Frederick's room an excited crowd of boarders and ser- 
vants, headed by the landlady, and there, in the middle 
of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque night-shirt, 
was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, wal- 
nut lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping 
from his nose — cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, 
to the strains of a weird melody, the refrain of which 
was "Won't little Norah be surprised?" 

It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. 
He had brushed his teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of 
Peru, and they had gone into mourning over the out- 
rage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of 
his curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them 
off his head altogether. He had sought to remove the 
superfluous hirsute attraction of his nose with the For- 
mula, and he had added twelve inches to its growth. 
To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache 
he had invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Ken- 
ovator, and he had so renovated the surroundings of 
his mouth that it resembled the drawer of a walnut 
escritoire. 

Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even 
more than Fred had anticipated, but so little did she 
appreciate his sacrifice that she is now another's. 



222 AN IRISH CRA^Y-QUILT. 



CONSTABLE X. 

WHOSE walk is so stately and grand round the 
beat? 
What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street? 
What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx, 
Kepels so the notion of frivolous winks ? 
Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook, 
Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look ; 
The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks, 
Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X ? 

How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks, 
As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box. 
And kisses the book with a resonant smack, 
Like the click of a latch or a rifle's sharp crack. 
Swear a hole through a pot ? why he'd think it no feat 
To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet. 
And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex 
Or puzzle that paragon. Constable X. 

Yet he is not immortal ; the greatest have hours 
When the mind can descend from the stars to the 

flowers. 
And he, even he, that great creature, has known 
Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne. 
And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt 
Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt. 
For Cupid, the rogue, who ne'er comes but to vex, 
Has got inside the tunic of Constable X, 



An iRisii CRAZY-QuiLt. 223 

Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it 

please, 
But, alas ! 'tis the truth, he's been seen on his knees. 
He has even un])ended to laughter and sport. 
And his kiss has resounded outside of the court. 
Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate ! 
Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late ; 
Love's handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex 
Who ne'er release prisoners, has Constable X. 



LUCIFER'S LABORATORY. 

SUEROUNDED by bottles and flagons and bowls, 
To the music of shrieks from perishing souls, 
Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask, 
The Devil pursued his terrible task. 
Hatred and lust, and all the horde 
Of hell's worst vices into it he poured. 
And when it was brimming with fever and sin, 
He took the bottle and labelled it GIN. 

Another flask in his hand he raised 

And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed. 

As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft. 

Orphans fatherless, wives bereft, 

Doses of poverty, doses of crime, 

For every region, for every clime, 

And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb 

As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM. 



224 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

And then a barrel he seized to fill 
With grief and affliction, pain and ill ; 
Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim ; 
Coma, to palsy the heart and limb ; 
Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog 
Till God's image became but a senseless log, 
And the devil's lips were twined in a leer 
As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER. 

The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth 
As he scattered his mixtures around the earth. 
And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed, 
North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught. 
And the demon yell as each toper fell. 
Voiced the chorus, "Another recruit for hell ! 
Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin, 
Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin ! " 



A. 



THE MONOPOLIST'S MOAN. 

M I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed? 



Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my 
head? 
Has the world gone to smash ? is it chaos that reigns ? 
Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains ? 
There's something gone wrong which I cannot make 

out. 
The people don't know what on earth they're about ; 
There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents, 
For no lonofer we rule with our dollars and cents. 



AN IRISH CEAZY-QUILt. 225 

Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers ? 
Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours? 
Fame's ladder saw us on the top, and you know 
That muscle and brain were contented below ; 
Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold 
Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold. 
For a very small gift from our riches contents 
The outcast who hasn't got dollars and cents. 

But now there's a mattering startling and strange 
From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change, 
A really absurd and ridiculous plan 
To ostracize gold and to dignify man ; 
The base common herd won't submit any more 
To a rule that their fathers found proper before. 
And the veriest scum of the gutters invents 
Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents. 



WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS. 

AT aRANT'S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885. 

ONCE again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant 
of the column 
That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of 
darksome days ; 
Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors 
furled or drooping 
'Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents 
of battle's blaze. 



226 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUtLt. 

Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in som- 
bre garb of pity. 
Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the 
old brigade ; 
And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time 
soldier order — 
The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade. 

At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies 
pierce surrounding 
Mists and clouds of two long decades — picture vis- 
ions far away, 
Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero's 
pillow, 
Or the Kappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue 
and Gray. 

Hark ! the muffled drums are beating calls for charg- 
ing or retreating. 
And their old Commander leads again the legions of 
the free ; 
In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war's 
thunder rolling ; 
They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to 
the sea. 

See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their pain- 
ful footsteps lighter ; 
The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camp- 
ing strains, 



AN IRISH CRA2Y-QUILT. 227 

And the " boys " again together tramp through swamp 
or over heather, 
Joyous only in then- triumphs and forgetful of their 
pains. 

Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle 
glance is sweeping 
With mingled pride and pleasure o'er the tried and 
faithful line ; 
Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried 
ranks ascending 
The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o'er abandoned 
scarp and mine. 

Still more vivid grows the seeming : still more real is 
the dreaming. 
While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict's 
passioned glow, 
For in Victory's fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands 
of power. 
Like their leader, they know only former brothers 
in the foe. 

Halt ! The soldier's dream is over, and gray scattered 
locks uncover ; 
Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners 
must entwine ; 
For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, 
kneeling. 
Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the 
line. 



^28 AN IRISH CRA2:Y-QUII/r, 

Yet, no ; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever, 
And, when Time shall dose the record of all nations' 
peace and war, 
The Angel's trump shall waken ranks unbroken and 
unshaken, 
And their old Commander lead them through the 
Golden Gates Ajar. 



THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT'S GRAVE. 

/^ RE AT chieftain, o'er thy silent clay 
VlT" Unite in tears the Blue and Gray, 
Grief knows no frontier line to-day. 

Among the gifts the nation showers 
Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours — 
A shamrock wreath among the flowers. 

A type its emerald leaflets three 
Of thy best attributes will be — 
Faith, Courage, and Humanity. 

Faith in the right, whate'er oppose, 
Courage that with disaster rose, 
Mercy to brave but beaten foes. 

When danger threatened Freedom's shrine 
In her defence with thee and thine 
Our exiled race were found in line. 

With thee we bore the storm and stress. 
Hard-fought retreat and onward press 
Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 229 

Thy eagle glances oft might scan 
Our Celtic features in the van 
When battle surged round Sheridan. 

And never poured the crimson flood, 
To mark where desperate valor stood, 
But with the tide ebbed Irish blood. 

So as your life-stream then we fed, 
Where'er your own brave nation bled, 
Our tears to-day with hers are shed. 

Our steel shone 'mid your bayonets, 
Our grief now sobs with your regrets. 
Our shamrocks fringe your violets. 



MAINE AND MAYO. 

SIX months in front of Eichmond's walls we fretted 
and we fumed. 
As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon 

boomed ; 
We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy 

swamp. 
But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp. 
There was snarling and complaining all along the Union 

line. 
And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine, 
While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train 
Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank 

from Maine, 



230 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. ^ 

Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors 
foul, 

The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long- 
familiar howl ; 

And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were im- 
pressed, 

Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest. 

One day with such a batch there came a boy with 
sunny hair, 

And a laugh that took the breath away of every vet- 
eran there, 

Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet's rippling 
tlow, 

" I'm very glad to meet ye — I'm a stranger from 
Mayo." 

Lord ! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed 

his cheerful way 
To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy 

day; 
He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry 

wiles, 
And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles. 
Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, 

at first. 
Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he 

inly cursed ; 
But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish 

glow. 
Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine 

from Mayo, 



AN IRISH CKAZY- QUILT. 231 

And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose 

Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled 
lurking foes, 

When " The Wind That Shakes the Barley " shook the 
leafless Southern pines, 

Or " The Rocky Road to Dublin " seemed a- winding 
through our lines, 

A pair of feet went treading through the dance's tan- 
gled maze 

With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling 
days — 

"Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?" was some- 
times the refrain. 

And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice 
in Maine. 

Our corps is but a corporal's guard ; beneath Virginian 
clay. 

Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God's reviewing day. 

But the "twins,"' as once we called them, Celt and 
Yankee, still remain. 

Though one's at home in Connaught, and the other back 
in Maine. 

Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags pro- 
claim 

That Ireland's in the Union now in everything but name ; 

While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to 
know 

How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for 
Mayo. 



232 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT, 



A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH. 

SANDY Eow, as everybody knows, is the Mecca 
and Medina of Orangeism in Belfast, the sacred 
shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its true- 
blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of 
its apostles, the sanctuary and haven of its political 
refugees, when fleeing from prospective fines of forty 
shillings and costs for holy war-cries of " To h — with 
the Pope." If a Papist foot should dare pollute its 
consecrated — whiskey consecrated — shore, that Papist 
foot would be carrying a head that was in danger of 
having what little brains it contained undergo a process 
of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of the dese- 
crated pavement. 

In that home of Hobah has resided for many years 
and seasons one Green — Billy Green, so called after 
the hero of glorious, pious, and immortal memory, in 
whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread as 
far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, 
*' Spartan Schomberg," w^ould permit. But, alas ! brave 
Billy has been w^ounded in more numerous and more 
tender portions of his constantly constitutional anatomy 
than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all 
his campaigns ; and, worst of all, his fate excites no 
charitable commiseration or solacing sympathy in his 
lodge or among his neighbors, but only provokes tan- 
talizino^ titters and laceratins^ lauo:hter. He has suf- 
fered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering 
for half a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause, 



a 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 233 

In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, 
and also in consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, 
Billy fitted up in his back yard an outhouse in which 
he allowed to be stored their sashes, banners, and re- 
galia for processions, and their bludgeons, blunder- 
busses, and pokers intended for political arguments 
with National League invaders. 

For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 
guarded its sacred banners and kept its powder dry. 
However, during the past few weeks, an assemblage of 
peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no 
loyal principles, marched in no patriotic processions, 
and joined in no salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had 
illegal possession of that cabin. 

During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of 
all the cats of Sandy Row. There has been a convoca- 
tion, a conference, a mass meeting, a howling congre- 
gation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have 
given musical entertainments of excruciating variety 
and such persistent continuity that they have never in- 
dulged in even ten minutes' interval for refreshments. 
About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor Cfives 
the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G 
sharp. Then a short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, 
and there is a five minutes' duet, to which a Highland 
bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red Shirt's war- 
whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have 
reached the most horrifj^ing part of this performance a 
black demon with the influenza throws in a basso- 
profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with the 
catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizins: solo, with 



234 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

scales and variations. Then the midnight feline wan- 
derers lift up their voices in scores (numerically and 
vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into which 
each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air 
trembles with heart-rending screeches, and yells, and 
spits, and growls, and hisses, and whistles, and cries 
for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings ; and 
the twins in Jones's, next door, waken up and join in 
the medley, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them 
to slumber with soul-sickening lullabies ; and the lodg- 
ers put their heads out of the window, and swear at 
the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent ; and 
all the dogs in the street join in with diversified barks 
and carefully assorted yelps, from the shrill treble of 
the parson's Skye terrier to the thundering tones of the 
grocer's mastiff, while the milkman's jackass kicks the 
panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head 
through, ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such 
a diabolical bray that you think chaos has come again, 
and Pandemonium reigns supreme. 

From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the 
final cadenza, there isn't a pianissimo movement in the 
whole operatic celebration, or symphony, or overture, 
or musical festival, or whatever you like to call it. It's 
all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about four-hun- 
dred-and-forty-four tissimo. 

The good men and true of Sandy Row determined 
that they would submit to this invasion of their rights, 
this outrage upon their dignity, this systematic sup- 
pression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of 
old boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used- 






AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 235 

up culinary utensils with which those cats had been 
bombarded would have established a flourishing marine 
store business, but these munitions of war had been 
exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident 
that desperate measures were necessary to restore law 
and order in Green's back yard. They were adopted. 

Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skir- 
mishing order — each man on his own account; no 
general plan of organization; no commander — a kind 
of guerilla warfare, m fact, was to be waged on the 
melodiously maddening marauders ! 

Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle 
with broken glass, rusty nails, buckshot, and darning 
needles. 

Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks 
and paving stones, and piled them up in his bedroom 
for action. 

The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in 
his scullery, and completed scientific arrangements for 
a powerful pressure. 

Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the 
back window as a marksman had disgusted him with 
that method of attack, got a long cavalry sword, and 
determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel. 

Alas ! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, 
oh, why, was not Lord Rossmore there to direct the 
strategy of these noble defenders of homes and altars, 
civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores? 

About 11.30 on New- Year's night, the quadrupedal 
Pattis and Nicolinis commenced their usual grand con- 
cert. Green waited patientlj until they had got through 



236 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUIIT. 

the preliminary solos, but when they commenced some 
Wagnerian horror in chorus, he slipped out silently, in 
wrath and his night-shirt, and crept, sword in hand, 
towards the fatal shed. 

Almost at the same moment three neio^hborino^ win- 
dows were noiselessly raised, and preparations for three 
terrific onslaughts were rapidly perfected. 

It was dark, — so dark that the gleaming orbits of 
the phosphorescent choristers could scarcely be dis- 
cerned, and the artillerists and rifle rangers had little 
but the mortifying music to direct their deadly aim. 

Suddenly that ceased. The videttes of the cater- 
wauling corps had caught a glimse of Green's night- 
gown as it was floating and fluttering gracefully in the 
winter breeze. In an instant, however, mounting a 
step-ladder, he was amongst them ; and as the sabre of 
his sire whirled round him in vengeful sweeps, stabs, 
slashes, and scintillations, a hundred expressions of 
feline astonishment, fear, pain, expostulation, and rage 
burst like a tornado from the lungs of a hundred differ- 
ent cats, and the concentrated essence of their three 
months' Ij^rical training surged through their teeth in 
one stupendous, ear-splitting, paralyzing, five-hundred- 
dollar prize screech. 

Victory irradiated the manly brow of Green with a 
mystic halo ; but alas, like Wolfe at Quebec, or Nelson 
at Trafalgar, he was fated to fall in the hour of his 
triumph, for just then a jagged brick, hurled by Tom- 
linson with the velocity of a bombshell, caught him in 
the small of the back, a washing-mug, donated to the 
general good by the Roman matron spirit of Mrs. T., 



AN IRISH CnAZV-QUILT. 237 

was splintered into fragments on his head, a shower of 
sharp-pointed paving-stones rattled about his ribs, and 
Avhen he turned round to scream " Cease Firing," a 
three-inch Niagara from the grocery caught him square 
in the mouth, and tumbled him head over heels off the 
shed. As he was wheeling in an insane somersault 
through the air, bang ! went Jones's blunderbuss, and it 
seemed to Green as if all the cats had suddenly com- 
bined in a ferocious and fiendish charge upon his person, 
and were clawing him in about ten million directions. 

The doctors have been exploring his carcass ever 
since, and striking new veins of scrap-iron and lead at 
every excavation. The nurses at the Northern Hospital 
say that no such thrilling sight has ever been witnessed 
in that institution in their experience as is afforded by 
the spectacle of one surgeon taking nails out of his legs 
with a pair of pincers, while another operates on his 
shoulder with a screw-driver, and the third man threads 
the eyes of protruding needles and draws them out by 
the gross. It is the general opinion among these pro- 
fessional men that to clear him out thoroughly they 
want a laborer or two with pickaxes and shovels. 

Green himself vows that, if he ever recovers, he w^ill 
quit L. O. L. 1111 forever. When the rank and file 
can't tell the difference between a tom-cat and a grand 
master, it's time to vacate the latter post. He thinks 
the government is very remiss in allowing the Orange- 
men to retain their weapons. If Jones don't get three 
years under the Crimes Act for carrying arms in a pro- 
claimed district and perforating a loyal hide with the 
contents of a tinker's budget — why, he'll join the 



238 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



Fenians, that's all. They have one motto he appreci- 
ates : — 

Whether on the scaffold high, 

Or in the battle's van. 
The fittest place for man to die 

Is where he dies for man. 

That's decent. It sounds a great deal better than 
dying on the top of an old shed in a dirty back yard 
for a lot of confounded cats. But he's not going to die 
if he knows it. He don't want the poet laureate of 
L. O. L. 1111 to let himself loose on his tombstone in 
this fashion : — 

Here lies the body of Billy Green, 
As true a grand master as ever was seen, 
But although he was green and decidedly fat, 
He was shot with tenpenny nails, pellets, broken glass, 
false teeth, pipe-shanks, darning needles, and a 
lot of undiscovered ironmongery, in mistake for a 
measly, mangy, stumpy-tailed skeleton of a tor- 
toise-shell cat. 



THE PRIEST WITH THE BROGUE. 

A miner's reminiscence. 

DOWN by the gulch, where the pickaxe's ringing 
Never struck chords with the stream's smothered 
singing — 
For we had dammed its bright ardor to sloth : 
Dammed it with claybanks and damned it with oath — 



AN IRISH CRA2Y-QUILT. 239 

Curses in Mexican, curses in Dutch, 

Curses in purest American ; such 

Polyglot blasphemy didn't leave much 

Eoom for the rest of the languages — there, 

Down by that gulch, where all speech seemed one swear, 

Naught but profanity ever in vogue, 

Wandered one morning a priest with a brogue. 

Also a smile. Now no mortal knows whether 
God has ordained they should travel together, 
But if in tongue Erin's music you trace. 
Bet Erin's sunshine peeps out in the face. 
Anyhow, Father McCabe had 'em both. 
Sunshine and harmony — natural growth. 
While the air trembled with half-suppressed oath, 
Eight down among us he stepped : all the while 
Feeling his way, as it were, with his smile. 
And when that staggered the obstinate rogue, 
Knocking him head over heels with his brogue. 

Inside a fortnight the brown-throated robins 

Perched undismayed just in front of our cabins ; 

Sang at our windows for all they were worth — 

Lucifer didn't own all of the earth ! 

Pistols grew rusty, and whiskey seemed sour ; 

Nobody hunted the right or left bower ; 

Deserts put verdure on — one little flower 

Bloomed in a niche of the rock. At its root, 

Erstwhile undreamt of, lay rich golden fruit ! 

Yes ; we struck gold. Arrah, Luck's thurrum jpogue^ 

Couldn't go back on a priest with the brogue ! 

* Give me a kiss. 



^4A) AN IRISH CRAZY-QtJILi:. 



ARAB WAFT SONG. 



ALLAH, il Allah ! the infidel's doom 
Knells through the desert from rescued Khar- 
toum . " 
The blood of the Giaour is encrusting our swords, 
And the vultures encircle his perishing hordes. 
The gleam of our banners, the blaze of our spears, 
Have blanched the black heart of the pale-face with 

fears. 
How he reels, how he staggers in agony back ! 
Spur, sons of the desert, swift, swift on his track ! 

The dwellers in cities may quake at his frown, 

When his fireships fling ruin and death on their town. 

But the hearts of the tribesmen are fearless and free 

As the winds of the desert or waves of the sea ; 

And their valor will scatter his merciless bands 

As the fiery sirocco whirls broadcast our sands. 

Their fury will break on his terrified host 

With the strength of the tempest that lashes our coast. 

Poor, pitiful fool ! in his arrogant pride 
He would chain the tornado and fetter the tide ; 
He has tempted our wrath, and he trembles aghast 
As bursts on his legions the death-dealing blast ; 
And, shattered in fragments, his gaudy array 
Is melting before our wild charges in spray ; 
Around him destruction in lurid cloud rolls. 
And Eblis is yawning for infidel souls ! 



AN" IRISH CKAZY-QXIILT. 241 

Allah, il Alkih ! for God and the right, 

Press on, lance and spear, to the glorious fight; 

Though our life-blood in torrents should crimson our 

plains. 
Better freedom in death than existence in chams. 
On, lions of Islam, the wolves are afraid. 
See, see, how they shrink from your conquering blade ! 
Strike swiftly, and spare not — yon turbanless crowd 
Sought our desert for conquest to find it their shroud. 



HOBBIES IN OUR BLOCK. 

IF every madman, and monomaniac, every idiot and 
imbecile in our block were to be transplanted to- 
morrow, what a lot of room would be left, and what a 
howling wilderness the place would become ! I don't 
know a completely, take him all round sort of a sensi- 
ble man in the community. Every one of my acquaint- 
ances has some ridiculous hobby. There's Smith. His 
failino^ is doojs. He has a miniature Kennel Club show 
up at his place. He has such a multitude of canine 
live-stock that he has to have them entered in a ledger, 
and he calls over the muster-roll every night to see 
that none of his barks have steered their course to 
other ports. He has lost all his friends through his 
hobby. When a fellow sheds his gore at the knocker, 
owing to the attentions of a bulldog with powerful 
jaws ; and when he loses a square foot of his trousers 
in the lobby through the inquiring nature of a mastiff; 
and when he is brought to bay at the parlor door by a 



24^ AK IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

ferocious bloodhound that seems inclined to take an 
evening meal off him ; and when he is transformed into 
a statue of adamant in his seat by the consciousness 
that there are half a dozen variegated specimens of 
fighting-dogs merely waiting a movement from him as 
a signal to chaw him up — under such circumstances 
one don't feel inclined to take advantage of Smith's 
hospitality too often. 

Brown's weakness is flowers. Brown is always 
handicapped in the race of life by a desire to linger on 
the wayside and breathe the fragrance of the lily and 
the rose, the daffadowndilly, and the potato blossom. 
You never meet Brown but he wants you to inhale the 
perfume of some horticultural wonder or other. The 
last time I met him he wanted me to envelop my 
senses with the heavenly odor of some infernal tulip he 
had with him. There was one of the most energetic 
bees I ever encountered hidden away in its petals. To 
gratify Brown I took a ten-horse-power sniff. I never 
smelt anything like it before. I carried my nose about 
in a sling for a fortnight afterwards. 

Johnson's hobby is old porcelain. His delirious 
desire to indulge in all kinds of ancient crockery, 
broken earthen-ware, blue-moulded slop-basins, and 
cracked washing-mugs has so affected his brain that he 
believes himself a Dresden china jug, and is frightened 
out of his life that he may be smashed. He's afraid to 
shake hands with anybody, lest his handle might be 
broken ; he speaks in a whisper, for fear of injuring his 
spout ; and he is in such dread of being cracked that it 
takes him half an hour to sit down. 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILt. 243 

But Robinson, next door, is the worst case I know. 
His mental contortion is due to an insane desire to col- 
lect foreign postage stamps. He has carried his mania 
to a miraculous extent. I have known him to go down 
in a coal-mine to secure a rare specimen from a collier ; 
he has been up in a balloon to coax a scarce sort of 
stamp out of the aeronaut, and he would have pitched 
him overboard if he hadn't promised to turn it up ; he 
has changed his religion half a dozen times to get round 
persons that he thought could contribute to his album ; 
and on one occasion, when another crazy collector called 
on him in the middle of the night with a hundred or 
so of rare, unused stamps, as he couldn't find the 
matches, and didn't know where he had hung his pants, 
he just gummed the stamps round about his noble fig- 
ure, and went to bed rejoicing. Unluckily, the muci- 
lage of that distant shore, whose fatal postage stamps 
added a picturesque variety to his unadorned appear- 
ance which it had lacked before — that mucilage was of 
a diabolical stickiness, and after a week's sponging and 
fingering, and disposing himself in a series of striking 
attitudes over the spout of a kettle, he found that he 
couldn't improve his new costume without destroying- 
its component parts, so he has travelled the dull jour- 
ney of every-day life since with a kaleidoscopic ar- 
rangement of postage stamps attached to his hide, and 
a knowledge that he will be well worth skinning when 
he pegs out. It is inconvenient not to be in a position 
to exhibit his entire assortment to his friends. With 
some intimate acquaintances he can be confidential, 
and after going over his half-dozen ordinary albums it 



244 AN IRISH CRAZr-QUlLT. 

is really magnificent to be able to peel off* the garb of 
civilization and invite inspection of his remaining treas- 
ures. But to most enthusiasts in the philatelic line he 
can only drop mysterious hints of what he could show 
them if the customs of the country permitted its cos- 
tumes to be more scanty. 



NOT A JOHN L. SULLIVAN. 

I HA YE never taken any interest in pugilism since 
my schoolboy days. 

I studied it once then, with highly unsatisfactory re- 
sults. 

There was a boy called Bill at the school where I 
imbibed my knowledge, who was the bane of my exist- 
ence. He used to take liberties with my marbles, and 
make free with my pegtops, and fly his kites with my 
string, and knock me down and sit on me when I re- 
monstrated. 

I thirsted for his blood. 

I brought my father's bulldog to take my part in a 
quarrel. It took my part — in fact, it took several 
parts of me. 

I summoned re-enforcements in the shape of my little 
brother. Bill piled my little brother on top of me, 
and wanted more of the family to complete the structure. 

Then I vowed that I would be avenged, and bought 
a sixpenny hand-book of boxing, and went in for a 
study of that literary masterpiece. It was illustrated 
with striking diagrams. Figure 1, — the position. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 245 

Figure 2, — one for his nob. Figure 3, — the body 
blow. Figure 4, — the return. Figure 5, — the upper 
cut. Figure 6, — the cross-counter. 

I devoured the instructions, and I practised the atti- 
tudes for weeks, till I mastered both so completely 
that I was a walking encyclopedia of P. R. theory, and 
I had only to be asked for Figure 1, or 3, or 4, or 
whatever I was desired, and I posed so statuesquely 
correct that I could have been photographed to illus- 
trate "Fistiana." 

But I held my secret, and bided my time, and sub- 
mitted to Bill's insults with the glowing consciousness 
of approaching triumph, while I developed my newly 
acquired science in my bedroom on the pillows, and 
aduiinistered "one-two's " in the ribs to the hair mat- 
tress, and "propped" the bolsters, and sparred at my 
shadow on the wall, and showered rib-benders and hot 
'uns in the bread-basket on imaginary Bills till I felt 
like a conquering hero. 

At last I decided that the hour of Fate had struck ; 
the supreme moment had arrived for squelching Bill ; 
and one day, when he had helped himself to my lunch, 
and grumbled at its scantity, I invited him to accom- 
pany me when school was over to a sequestered vale, 
where I might punch his head. 

He came. 

I gave my hand-book to my brother Joe, and told 
him to sing out the proper figures for the various stages 
of the battle. 

I made all my preparations in the orthodox way. I 
threw my cap into the improvised ring, tied a handker- 



246 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

chief for a belt round my waist, and wanted to shake 
hands a la Sullivan and Kilrain^ but Bill declined. 

Then I struck Figure 1, the position, and Bill struck 
another figure — which happened to be me. 

" Figure 2," shouted Joe, " one for his nob." I made 
-some mistake in this, because it resulted in two or 
three for my nob, and while I was tr3nng to get my 
head under my arms, out of the road, " Figure 3," yelled 
Joe, "the body blow!" but that infernal Bill didn't 
fight according to the regulations at all ; for before I 
got Figure 3 into operation, something came bang 
against my teeth, and I tried to dig my grave in the 
ground with the back of my head. 

I wanted to consider the situation a little longer 
when they called "Time," but Joe whispered that 
Figure 4 was sure to fetch him. All I had to do was 
to wait till he let out, and then, parrying the blow 
with my left, send the right into his potato trap, and 
settle him. Well, Bill soon let out, and Joe screeched 
" Figure 4 ! " and I don't know where I sent my right, 
but my nose encountered both his fists one after the 
other in a way that wasn't in the book at all, and when 
Joe roared " Figure 5, try 5 ! " I could only gasp — " He 
won't let me," before there was an earthquake some- 
where, and I was thrown three or four yards away, 
and found myself trying to swallow all my front teeth. 

I was so disgusted that w^hen they called "Time" 
again, I wouldn't listen to the voice of the tempters, 
and wanted to go to sleep on the green sward, and 
when Joe came and wished me to illustrate a few more 
diagrams, I could have poisoned him, I don't believe 
in the manlv art. 



AN IKISH CliAZY -QUILT. 247 



THE LINGUIST OF THE LIFFEY. 

[Among the many " learned " opponents of Home Rule in Ireland 
a few years ago, was one somewhat famous prof essor of Trinity Col- 
lege, who boasted among his other attainments an unlimited knowl- 
edge of all Oriental languages, living and dead. An irreverent 
wag of a student carefully copied the inscription on a tea-chest, and 
bringing it to the loyal professor assured him it was a letter from 
a Chinese mandarin on the Irish question, and that a translation of 
it for the Tory papers would be of absorbing interest in that cru- 
cial hour. The task proved too much for Polyglot. The tea-chest 
knocked him out in one short round.] 

There once was a doctor of famed T. C. D. — 

Dr. Blank we shall call him — a Crichton was he ; 

Not a science or language earth ever has known 

But he'd mastered so well he could call them his own — 

Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany — these 

Were trifles he'd learned in his moments of ease ; 

Mathematics, Mechanics, Geology, Law, 

Theology, Medicine, Strategy — pshaw ! 

They all were mere flea-bites to that massive mind 

Which left intellects minor some eras behind. 

'Twas in linguistic lore that he dazzled the most 

The Dons of the College — our doctor could boast 

An intimate knowledge of every tongue 

Ever written, or printed, or spoken or sung. \ 

In the purest of Attic he silenced a Greek ; 

For hours to Ojibbeway chiefs he would speak ; 

A Zulu, whom accident brought to our shore. 

Heard him preach in Zulost, and was dumb evermore ; 

He converted a Choctaw, in purest Choctese ; 

Made a Mandarin weep at his flowing Chinese ; 



248 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

In Turkish persuaded a Bashi-Bazouk ; 
In Hindoostanee showed a Sikh how to cook ; 
Taught quadratic equations in Welsh to a goat, 
And none of the consonants stuck in his throat. 
If he failed to translate, or translated all wrong, 
The Chinese inscribed on a chest of Souchong, 
Not his be the blame — no, the odium must rest. 
On the printer or reader who muddled that chest ; 
Had the text been entire he had read it with ease, 
But he wasn't prepared for an " out " in Chinese. 



A WINDY DAY AT CABRA. 

I WOULD sooner be consigned to Mountjoy Prison 
for eighteen months under the Coercion Act than 
spend another windy day in that Dublin suburb so dear 
to Castle pensioners and hangers-on, Cabra. A friend 
of mine hangs up his hat permanently in that neighbor- 
hood. He uses a hat-stand for that purpose, but there 
are occasional perfumes floating round there that would 
accommodate a fireman's helmet. My friend's hearth 
and home are in the vicinity of a plot of w^aste ground, 
the property of the executors of a deceased alderman ; 
and if the bones of the departed civic dignitary were 
laid in that promiscuous waste, and there was a con- 
spiracy to bury them fathoms deep from future discov- 
ery, it could not be carried out more vigorously and 
more enthusiastically. I once passed a few hours with 
my unfortunate acquaintance. I had a full view from 
his drawing-room window of the interesting ceremonies 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 249 

of the day. I had barely taken my seat when a pic- 
turesque procession of farm carts, donkey wagons, 
wheelbarrows, and unattached scavengers hove in 
sight. Then a red rubbish rover deposited alongside 
of this oflensive breastwork a miscellaneous collection 
of decayed cabbage leaves, cooked and uncooked, a 
mixture of mashed turnips and raw turnip peeling, 
potatoes in various stages of disease and digestion, and 
a heterogeneous compound of varied articles of food, 
which even a provincial editor would decline with 
thanks. After this a wheelbarrow wanderer shot in 
the ravine between the two mortifying mounds a spe- 
cially assorted stock of disreputable rags and broken 
bottles, with two dead cats and a vivisected fox terrier 
to guard the pass. And then all round the rambling 
refuse-rangers commenced to add fresh varieties to the 
dirty diversity, and new scents to the odoriferous 
ozone. This went on for three or four hours, the ka- 
leidoscope of contamination changing with the arrival 
of every contingent of contagion. I felt for my friend, 
but when I started homewards in the dusk I felt worse 
for myself. A gale had arisen of such stupendous 
force that I had to open my mouth sideways to speak, 
for fear of being blown inside out, and even then the 
wind whistled through the irregularities in my teeth 
like an atmospheric orchestra. My hat was bfown oiT, 
and when I recovered it there were ten pounds of clay, 
a few dozen broken corks, the skeleton of a pig's head, 
and a jagged chimmey pot (which nearly cut my thumb 
off) in it, and it was enwreathed in a garland of turnip- 
tops and cauliflower that smelt of anything but their 



250 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

native fields. As I opened my lips to utter sage re- 
flections on the situation, a sudden gust banged a 
dilapidated Champion into my mouth, and I had to 
dig it out with my penknife. I came home with a 
multitude of unknown tastes in my palate, that cayenne 
pepper, salt, mustard, vinegar, and John Jameson's 
finest distillation, taken in large doses at irregular but 
frequent intervals for weeks, failed to eradicate ; and 
such a numerous and variegated selection of smells that 
I failed to count them all and was unable to distinguish 
one-third of the number. It would take Faraday's lab- 
oratory to disinfect my collar. Imagine what my top- 
coat was like ! 



PEGGY O'SHEA. 

AN IRISH SERENADE. 

THE pale moon is beaming, 
The bright stars are gleaming. 
Awake from thy dreaming, 

Acushla, arise ! 
For sure the moon's light, dear, 
Though vivid an' bright, dear. 
Is but darkest night, dear, 
Compared with your eyes. 
Glimmerin', 
Shimmerin', 
Down in the river there, 

Dancin' and glancin' and prancin' away, 
See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an' quiver there, 
Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O'Shea ! 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 251 

See, your own thrue love 
Is waitin' for you, love. 
So waken anew, love. 

An' gladden my sight ! 
Don't keep me quakin' here, 
Freezin' an' achui' here, 
Trimblin' an' shakin' here, 
All the long night ; 
Quiverin', 
Shiveriu', 
Faith it's Deciniber, dear. 

Freezes me, teases me — darlin' don't stay ; 
Troth ! this cowld night for a year I'll remim- 
ber, dear, 
For I'm all frost-bitten, Peggy O'Shea ! 

This morn had you been, love. 
With me, you'd have seen, love, 
A new dress of green, love, 
I bought — for, you mind, 
But last week you said, dear, 
You hated the red, dear. 
So get out of bed, dear. 
All' let down the blind ! 
Shyly, 
Slyly, 
Creep to the window now, 

Sure, love, your love cannot say nay, 
Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now. 
Bent at your shrine, darlin' Peggy O'Shea ! 



252 AN IRISH ORAZY-QUILT. 

Why have you waited 
So long, whin you stated 
To me that you hated 

The red of our foes ? 
While you are keepin' 
Me here w4th your sleepin' 
The color is creepin' 
All over my nose ! 
Face it, 
Chase it, 
Meet it with bravery, 

Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray. 
The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery, 
Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O'Shea ! 

Och, you are there now, 
So purty and fair now, 
I raley declare, now 

I'm murthered outright ; 
My mouth seems like butter, 

I hardly can mutter 
A sintince, or utter 

A word, love, to-night. 
Thumpin' 
An' bumpin' 
An' jumpin an' flutterin', 

Knockin' an' rockin', my heart seems astray, 
And, as I can't spake, why, I'll have to be 
st-st-stutterin' 
How much I love you, sweet Peggy O'Shea I 



AN IRISH Crazy-quilt. 253 

THE BOSTON CARRIER'S PLAINT, 

THE summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar 
cloud, 
Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty 

shroud ; 
The sky o'ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain, 
Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing 

rain. 
Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets 

amain 
Was one poor limping creature — the embodiment of 

pain. 
His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of 

ways, 
Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze ; 
His body was contorted ; bent his back, and clenched 

each hand, 
And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand ; 
Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcen- 
dental, 
For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental. 

I questioned him — this blighted one — I asked, him 

what the reason 
Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of 

season ; 
And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage 

prowling 
Around the near environs would have thought a wolf 

was howling : — 



254 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

" Don't my uniform tell you that I 

Am of the unfortunate band, 
Whom you see day by day passing by, 

Never pausing a moment to stand ; 
Who, in one perpetual round, 

Forever are marching, until 
It seems that while one of us stays overground 

Fate ordains he shall never be still. 

" 'Tis hard when the bright golden sun 

Smiles out from a clear azure sky, 
To set out on a pilgrimage ne'er to be done 

Till his glory has gone and passed by. 
And e'en along green country lanes, 

'Mid the scent of the newly mown hay. 
And a thousand gay birds chanting joyous refrains. 

Who would care to be tramping all day ? 

" Then why do you wonder to hear 
An unlucky sad mortal complain, 
Who has walked through the Hub, all the day pretty 
near, 
In this ne'er-ending, pitiless rain? 
^ Or say, are you looking for smiles 

From a fellow who feels on the rack, 
After walking some twenty odd miles 
On a path like a porcupine's back ? 

"They say that the Muscovite knout. 
On the back of a troublesome peasant, 

When wielded by hands that are stout, 
Is decidedly very unpleasant. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 255 

The rack and the thumb-screw, I'm told, 
Caused aught but delightful sensations. 

But what were their tortures of old, 
Compared to our new innovations ? 

" No martyr that ever yet died 

In those times that have long passed away. 
Whether gibbeted, hanged, drowned, or fried, 

Suifered more than I've suffered to-day. 
My feet are denuded of skin. 

My toes every one are disjointed. 
For the soles of my boots are peculiarly thin. 

And the most of our pavement is pointed ! 

"Aye, jagged, like the teeth of a saw. 
Or the glass of a smashed window-pane, 

Save where an occasional flaw 

Leaves a hole in to gather the rain — " 

Here my comrade gave vent to a shriek 

That emptied a neighboring tavern. 
He had planted one foot on a peak. 

While the other was lost in a cavern ! 

Then his language assumed such a tone — 

And one not by any means sweeter — 
And he mixed up such adverbs with every groan 

That they couldn't be put into metre. 
So thus my sad narrative ends. 

As I left the poor tortured one raving, 
And hoping the rest of his Post-office friends 

Would survive Boston's wonderful paving. 



256 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 



APROPOS OF THE CENSUS. 

IF they do not call for the census papers in our street 
soon, we shall have a revolution. The crisis has 
arrived in Ryan's already. Mrs. Kyan's mother came 
a day or two before the numbering of the people to 
assist Mrs. Ryan through a difficulty not altogether 
unconnected with the census. The enumerator hadn't 
called for the paper on Tuesday last, and on that morn- 
ing there was another visitor at Ryan's. Mrs. Ryan 
and her mother insist that the latest comer must be 
added to the list. Ryan, who is conscientious to a 
decimal point, argues that the important personage in 
question has no moral right to figure in the population 
for another ten years. After an animated and personal 
discussion on this point, Ryan retired to his study, 
took out the census paper, and filled up the last column 
by appending to his sainted mother-in-law's name the 
classical expression " idiot ! " That Indy got hold of 
the document later, and she filled up Ryan's own blank 
with the declaration that he was a brute, blind, deaf, 
dumb, and a dangerous lunatic. Ryan secured the 
blue pages afterwards, and what pen-and-ink profanity 
he was guilty of will not be known until the collector 
comes round. We expect something rather lively on 
that occasion. 

Brown has got his form filled up all right. There 
was a preliminary difficulty between himself and his 
better four-fifths as to whic^h of them had the greater 
claim to be entitled "Head of the Family." As she 
threatened to sit on him, if he resisted her mnnd;ito, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 257 

and her sitting weight is two hundred and fifty pounds 
avoirdupois, he consented to a compromise by which 
she appears as "Plead of the Family," and his dig- 
nity is maintained by the insertion of "Ditto, ditto, — 
occasionally." 

If Timmins's paper be not called for soon he will 
occupy the abnormal position of being the husband of 
a lady as yet unborn. Their eldest is fifteen, and duly 
entered as of that age, yet Mrs. T. insisted on figuring 
as thirty, and to avoid hysterics Timmins consented to 
let her appear as of that matronly but not too far 
advanced period of adolescence. She has had charge 
of the sheet since, and when it was not called for on 
Monday she studied her charms in the mirror for an 
hour or so, and thought appearances justified her in 
knocking two years oif her record. On Tuesday, a 
lady friend congratulated her on her youthful figure, 
and she abbreviated her years by half a decade. She 
has been at that column every day since, and by latest 
accounts was only two years ahead of her eldest born. 
In another week she should be fit for spoon and bottle- 
feeding. 

The worst case of all, however, is that of poor Eob- 
inson. Eobinson is the family man of our street. He 
has been adding to the population of it for a quarter of 
a century with a regularity that is inspiring. He is a 
commercial traveller, and he seldom returns from a 
lengthy journey without the expectation of an intro- 
duction to another of his name and lineage. He don't 
know half his oflTspring. From the moment he turns 
the corner into pur street on his return from a month's 



258 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

absence he is the cential figiue of an imposing proces- 
sion. A territorial army of young Robinsons surround 
him, climb on his shoulders, take up quarters in his 
arms, cling to his coat-tails, impede his footsteps, fol- 
low four deep in his wake, and make the welkin ring 
with filial expressions of welcome. He has shirked 
the fearful ordeal of reckoning his responsibilities until 
the fatal exigencies of the census have brought it home 
to him. The only occasions on which he has obtained 
a faint idea of his success as a father have been those 
momentous periods when the baptismal signboard of 
the latest Robinson has had to be hung out. " What 
shall we call sonny?" has whispered the joint share- 
holder in his live-stock. " Oh, John." " But we've got 
John already." " Oh, then, name him Peter or Theo- 
dore — Theodore sounds well with Robinson." "But 
we have had Peter fifteen years, my dear, and it was 
only yesterday, you know, that we feared Theodore 
had the measles." Then Robinson would became irri- 
tated. "Hang it," he would exclaim, "do you think 
I am a Thom's Directory, or an army list, or a diction- 
ary of scriptural names ? What name are you short 
of? Give him that." Then Mrs. R. would begin the 
catalogue. " We have John, and Peter, and Theodore, 
and Joe's with his aunt, and Tom's at his grandmother's, 
and there's Philip, and James, and little Edmund, and 
— " Then Robinson would fly out with his fingers in 
his ears, and knock over two or three of the middle- 
sized ones in the lobby, and be followed by the screams 
of the smaller ones to the door, and meet some of the 
eldest " sparking " in the lane ; and when he entered 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 259 

some refuge to drown reflection in a flowing bowl, he 
would hear one tall stripling whisper to another, 
" Here's father," and his end of the counter would be 
left deserted. It was too much to think of, and he 
didn't, as a rule. 

But he couldn't escape the census. He was at home. 
His feelings as a father and his duty as head of the 
household demanded that that paper should be filled 
up. Anna Maria couldn't assist — there w^as another 
Robinson en route. So he entered the parlor oa Sun- 
day night, and sent the housemaid round to summon 
the clan. They came — in twos, in threes, in fours, 
and the last batch was half a dozen. He gazed upon 
the throng, and as he traced his nose in this one, his 
mouth in that, and the cast in his eye leered at him all 
round the room from other eyes, he felt like Noah — 
only Noah would have been nowhere with an ark of 
the dimensions used at the time of the Flood. He 
commenced his enumeration, and before any apprecia- 
ble diminution had been made in the numbers present 
by the retirement of those whose descriptive particu- 
lars had been entered, his form, with its fifteen spaces, 
pegged out. The room was still full. Two or three 
of the boys were playing leap-frog in one corner, a few 
girls were dressing and comparing dolls in another, the 
twins were fighting under the table, the youngest but 
two was struggling with the coal scuttle, and some of 
them hadn't come home from church yet. Then Rob- 
inson felt the full extent of his marital liabilities, and 
he laughed. " Ha ! ha ! " he yelled. " What's the use 
of this bit o' paper? Send me a volume, four hundred 



260 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT . 

pages, bound in morocco, forty names on a page ! I'll 
fill 'em up. Order up your whole staff of enumerators, 
two or three barrels of ink, and a goods train to carry 
out the returns. I'm ready. There's Robinsons enough 
round to make a census of their own. Oh, let us be 
joyful!" Then he began to dance, sang "A father's 
early love," and went up-stairs to swallow the latest 
arrival. It's a pity Robinson was at home this census 
time. 



NEW ENGLAND'S MARKSMEN. 

EANK on rank they march together, 
Through the lanes and o'er the heather, 
And the rhythmic ringing beat 
Of their measured swinojino^ feet 
Music bears in martial tone 
To the land they call their own. 
Happy land that proudly boasts, 
Not coerced, unwilling hosts. 
But around her throne can feel 
Hearts of oak and nerves of steel, 
Hearts whose love no bribes retain, 
Hands that never strike in vain. 

Through the fields of yellow grain, 
Through the woods of leafy green, 

Here and there on many a plain. 
Are their snowy targets seen ; 

And the mountains echo back 

From their peaks the rifles' crack. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 261 

Freedom knows how keen of eye, 

Firm of nerve and quick of finger, 
Are the marksmen brave who vie 

In the skill they freely bring her. 
Bunker Hill and Concord tell 
They have won their laurels well. 

And should war assail our shore, 

Still to guard it ever ready 
As their fathers w^ere of yore. 

Calm, yet eager, true and steady, 
Are the loyal ranks that play 
But at mimic strife to-day. 



A MIXED AIMTIQUARrAN. 

THEY have high old times of it occasionally at the 
Royal Dublin Society rooms. For example, at a 
recent festive gathering Mr. William Smith, C. E., read 
an exciting essay on "The Manufacture of paper from 
moliiia coerulea." Then there was some light literature 
from Mr. W. E. Burton, F. R. A. S., who gave a paper 
on " A new form of micrometer for astronomical instru- 
ments." After these two courses came dessert in the 
shape of a sweet thing from Dr. Leith Adams, F. R. S., 
about " Explorations in the bone cave of Ballynamin- 
tra." I wanted to read a dozen pages of "Falconer's 
Railway Guide," but in the feverish state of excitement 
in which the audience were boiling over it was felt that 
the experiment might be dangerous. It might have led 



^^2 AN lEISH CKAZr-QUILT. 

to revolution, and it wouldn't be logical — or geoloo-ical 
— to use the Ballynamintra bones for amnuinition " 

I always had a sneaking regard for these delicious 
scientific symposiums. I love to hear of the domestic 
arrangements of the gay ichthyosaurus, and to see 
dragged forth from the dark recesses of antiquity the 
private character (very shaky it was) of the lordlv 
mastodon. 

I once lectured myself on "Relics of the Pre-Glacial 
Period discovered during Excavations at Ballym^ic- 
slughaun." I got on very well for an hour or so 
The bald-headed antiquarian who had excavated the 
relics had been kind enough to label them — "Tooth of 
an Irish Elk," " Skull of a Land Agent of the Pliocene 
Era (dinged by rocks)," "Feeding-bottle of the Bone 
Age," etc. 

I was all right till I came to a confounded triangular 
iron arrangement in a wooden handle covered with mud 
I couldn't for the life of me tell what it was. There 
was no label on it. I was going to dub it the " toe-nail 
of an Irish giant," but the wooden handle forbade 
Finally, with a desperate plunge I went on : " The 
heroism of our sires has been told in song and story 
for centuries. The predatory Norse pirates turned not 
their prows to the inhospitable shores of Erin, guarded 
by fiery gallowglass and furious kerne. The^Danish 
mvaders felt at Clontarf the whirlwind passion of the 
Irish charge. What feelings of awe must be inspired 
by the sight of this — this — this ancient weapon — it 
is evidently a spear-head _ which in the nervous hands 
of some brave Celtic warrior of old has probably pierced 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 2G3 

many a proud invader's breast. This spear-head, ladies 
and gentlemen — " 

I was here interrupted by the appearance on the plat- 
form of a dirty bricklayer who had been engaged in the 
early part of the day in some repairs about the building. 
" Howld on," he exclaimed, seizing the pre-glacial relic ; 
"I beg your honor's pardon, but I want my throwel to 
finish a job outside ! " 



JONES'S UMBRELLA. 

THERE has been a lot of atmosphere round our 
neighborhood this past week, elones's umbrella 
has been round the neighborhood, too. On the whole 
it has pervaded the locality to a greater extent than the 
atmosphere, and has left impressions of a more or less 
durable character, according to their positions. Jones's 
umbrella is the eighth wonder of the world. Its size 
is majestic, its staying powers in the heaviest hurricane 
are miraculous ; its age is lost in the dim recesses of 
primeval tradition ; its performances are historic. It 
is believed to have belonged to the original Jones, and 
to have been manufactured in view of a second deluge, 
and were it not that the Joneses are such a scattered 
family (being distributed over half a dozen sub-lunar 
continents, to say nothing of their colonization of other 
spheres, principally tropical in their temperature), that 
umbrella could afford shelter to the clan yet. It is 
massive in its strength. It's a kind of an iron -clad um- 
brella. I won't undertake to say that it's bullet-proof, 
but a Ceylon cyclone or a Texan tornado wouldn't dis- 



264 AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 

turb a seam in it. It Las only one defect. Given 
sufficient space — say Yellowstone Park, and a child 
could open that umbrella ; but there are occasions when 
Samson would need all his locks to shut it up. TueS' 
day was one of those occasions. Jones and Mrs. Joneg" 
and three of the grown-up Joneses left their ancestral 
home to pay a visit to the Cyclorama. They had the 
umbrella with them. In an evil hour, Jones, persuaded 
by a slight shower that threatened destruction to Mrs. 
Jones's new bonnet, opened that umbrella. Just at that 
moment, a miniature tempest 'careened up the street. 
It struck the umbrella broadside on, and that antiquated 
arrangement of ribs and canvas began an express ex- 
cursion in the direction of the eastern coast, at the rate 
of a mile a minute. Jones held on to the umbrella, 
making heroic efforts to close it ; Mrs. Jones held on 
to him ; the little Joneses clung to her ; and the family 
quintette sailed along in a series of gyrations and 
bounds and flops that flung the whole population of 
the city into a labyrinth of confusion and dismay. 
Two hand-carts, a street car, an apple stall, and a 
policeman were whelmed in the impetuous charge. 
Then the wind changed and the umbrella suddenly 
turned round, jabbed Jones in the mouth, dabbed Mrs. 
Jones in the gutter, threw the Jones minors promis- 
cuously about the side streets, and started back errati- 
cally for the west. It was a thrilling time, but after 
Jones had been smashed through a few shop windows, 
and softened his brain against a lamp-post or two, and 
tried to dig up the pavement with that part of his manly 
figure caressed by his coat-tails, and sat down once or 



AN IKISII CKAZY-QUILT. 265 

twice quite unexpectedly in Mrs. Jones's lap, and lost 
his spectacles, and wrecked his hat, he let the umbrella 
go. It hasn't been seen since ; but he don't pine for it. 
He hesitates to offer a reward for its recovery. In 
fact, if any fellow restores it to him, I think he'll have 
that man's blood. 



LESSONS IN THE FRENCH DRAMA. 

THE adorable Sara has ])een, she has seen, she has 
conquered. She has nearly done for GufEn. 

Guffin is a pork butcher, and there is about as nmch 
romance in his nature as in that of Jay Gould. He 
prefers pigs to poetry, and knows much more about 
sausages than ho does about Shakespeare. 

Now, Mrs. Guffin is exactly the opposite. She is a3S- 
thetic, she is poetic, she is romantic — in fact, she has 
a Soul. So has her daughter, and the pair of them go 
languishing and sighing round the Guffin mansion with 
their Souls in a way that distracts Guffin, who has more 
liver than soul. That mansion is situate in a fashiona- 
ble suburb, far from the prosaic pork-curing establish- 
ment where Guffin makes his money — so far, in fact, 
from business houses of any description that, as Guffin 
puts it, one has to take a street-car to get a ha'porth of 
salt. Of course, in this sacred locality all mention of 
Guffin's trade is forbidden — Mrs. Guffin's soul couldn't 
stand it. The works of Hogg and Bacon find no place 
on the shelves of his library, the family never visit the 
theatre when Ham-let is on, and the fair young Guffin 
blighted the future of an ardent suitor, because he ac- 



266 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

cideiitally referred to the price of pig-iron, in which his 
father was interested. So there is a polite fiction kept 
up by the Guffins that GufEn, senior, is in a bank — a 
sort of director, and for the sal^e of peace that matter- 
of-fact pig- sticker has acquiesced in the social fraud. 
But he has declared he will do so no longer. His blood 
is up, and he has threatened to slaughter his future 
porcine victims in the front lawn, cure his bacon in the 
drawing-room, and decorate the mediaeval porch of his 
country home with strings of sausages. 

The ethereal Mile. Bernhardt was the cause of it 
all. From the day her appearance at the leading thea- 
tre was announced, Guffin has been a martyr to the 
French dramatic enthusiasm of his feminine accessories. 
They engaged a tutor who had advertised his profi- 
ciency, grammatically and conversationally, in the lan- 
guage of the Gaul. For six weeks the Saxon tongue 
was unheard in the house, save when some of its most 
vigorous expletives would escape Guflin, or when Miss 
G. or Mrs. G. would get stuck iu their French. The 
maid-of-all-work, cook, laundress, housemaid, and gen- 
erally useful Molly became Marie. It was " Marie, 
donnez moi la curling-tongs," or " Marie, avez vous 
such a thing as a hairpin about you?" the whole day 
long. Harry Snaffles, groom, stable-boy, gardener, and 
general help, was Henri, and he was beginning to get 
gray with such orders as — "Henri, mon gargon, har- 
ness le cheval noir, nous avons made up our mind to 
take a drive apres quatre heures et demi aujourd'hui." 
And Harry would go into the stables and bury his head 
in the straw, and wonder why he was born. 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 267 

But it wasn't till after they had seen the shadowy 
artiste in " La Dame aux Camellias " that the explosion 
came. They returned home enraptured. Guffin hadn't 
been with them. He said he'd been getting enough of 
French at home for nothing, and he wasn't going to pay 
for it. But they told him she was too utterly utter, 
and the gushing Miss G. showed him how Marguerite 
interviewed her intended father-in-law, while the Ma- 
tron Guffin gave an imitation of Sara B. dying of 
consumption. The latter performance was a failure, 
however. Mrs. Guffin is fat, she is ponderous, she is 
florid. Guffin, when he is facetious, says it would be 
a good investment to let her out in lots. She has a 
face you could dwell on actually as well as figuratively, 
and the most lively flea must find it a weary journey 
from her yard of placid forehead to the foot and a half 
of solid humanity she calls her chin. She has a neck 
that Guffin can only fling his arms round once a week, 
taking a note each day of the point where he leaves off". 
She has a chest and shoulders }ou could pitch a tent 
on. 

Once a month the stairs leading to her boudoir have 
to be repaired, and when a woman like that goes in for 
acting the consumptive, the result is disappointing. 

But she did; so did Miss G., and the next day one 
or other of them might be encountered about the house 
gasping and sighing and murmuring very much broken 
French, and practising faints and back-falls and death- 
scenes. When Guffin came home the dinner was 
spoiled ; Miss G. was leaning against the banisters of 
the stairs, one hand pressed against her beating heart, 



^(yS AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 

the other scratching her left ear, and her eyes turned 
upward towards the ceiling in an expression meant to 
convey unutterable anguish, but which really suggested 
she was learning to squint ; while Mrs. G. awaited her 
smaller half in the dining-room on the only seat that 
could accommodate her — the sofa, and looked as con- 
sumptive and woe-begone as a woman of her weight 
possibly could. Guffin had just heard of a failure in 
the curing trade which touched him, and he was in a 
morose humor. So when his dau2:hter drao:o:ed her- 
self wearily to the table and helped herself wnth a groan 
to the potatoes, and when his Avife, heaving a monstrous 
sigh, cut herself a pound and a half or so oft* the joint, 
and supplied Guffin with half an ounce or less, he broke 
into rebellion. 

"Look here," he said, "what are you grunting and 
groaning about, like a pig in a nightmare ? " 

"Pig ! " shrieked his wife. 

"Oh, mon Dieu ! " sobbed his daughter. 

"Yes, pig," retaliated Guffin; it's a noble animal. 
You'd neither of you have a shift to your backs if it 
wasn't for pigs." 

"You are a brute!" cried Mrs. G. "I shall leave 
the house this instant. Julia, order the carriage." 

Julia rang the bell with an expression of approach- 
ing insanity. The girl responded with an alacrity sug- 
gestive of a key-hole performance. 

"Marie," said Julia, "Henri." 

"Well, if you're hungry," snarled Guffin, "sit down 
and eat. What's Molly got to do with it? Perhaps 
you don't like the mutton. Will you have a rasher? " 



AN iRISli CRAZY-QUILT. 269 

*' Monster, unfeeling monster ! " screamed mater- 
femilias. "Let us haste, Julia, to quit this abode of — 
of — this abode of — this maison du diable, there!" 
she ejaculated, flinging a parting shot in French at the 
brutal Gufiin. 

"You needn't mind," said Guffin. "I'm goinir out 
myself. Hope you'll be in your senses when I come 
back. Get me my hat." 

"Marie," called Julia from the head of the stairs, 
"voulez vous bring up la chapeau de mon pere." 

"You needn't mind a chop or a pair," retorted GufEn. 
"I want my hat. And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you 
one thing. I've had enough of your French capers. 
You're turning my house into a gibl)erishing Bedlam. 

You've upset me so much with your d d rubbishy 

parley-vooing and moping round that I don't believe 
I'll ever be able to stick a pig with a cheerful heart 
aoain. I won't have it. It'll drive me mad. Hano^ it, 
if you don't drop this cursed nonsense, I'll let all the 
neighbors know what I am. I'll hang my signboard 
out of the drawing-room window, I'll put on a blue 
apron and my skewer and knife, and I'll stand on the 

front door-step all day. D n me, if I won't buy all 

the pigs at the next Smithfield market and anchor them 
out in the front garden, and I'll begin killing them the 
same night, and if their squealing don't let folks know 
what I am, I'll send circulars and samples of bacon to 
every house for two miles around." 

There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then 
forgetting their French and their consumption and their 
aesthetic delicacy, mother and child flung themselves 



270 . AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILl'. 

Upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped them- 
selves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge 
his eyes out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on 
the carpet, where the elephantine maternal Guffin sat on 
him for five minutes. How he survived this crushing 
operation is a miracle ; but he lives still, though he is 
so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took 
the precaution of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy 
would frequently put him up for a shutter. 



CALCRAFT AND PRICE.* 

A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS. 

OH ! England's the gem of the waters, 
The pride of the foam-crested sea ! 
And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters 

Are always contented and free ! 
Unknown are all want and starvation ; 
Her subjects are strangers to vice ; 
And the bulwarks of this model nation 
Are Calcraft and Governor Price ! 

Wherever this proud nation's standard 

Unfurls its red folds to the light. 
Its bearers you'll find are the vanguard 

Of freedom, and progress, and right. 

* Calcraft was a notorious English hangman, and Price a British 
jailer, whose brutalities to Irish political prisoners will be remem- 
bered for years. 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 27 1 

Barbarian tribes, by their teaching, 

Her soldiers reclaim in a trice ; 
Oh, there's nothing can equal the preaching 

Of Calcraft and Governor Price ! 

From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon, 

Wherever their footsteps have trod. 
With the aid of the bayonet and cannon 

They've planted the altar of God ! 
And the teachers of heretic notions 

Have been silent and quiet as mice, 
For fear they should pay their devotions 

At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price ! 

Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter 

A word 'gainst the laws of the realm ? 
Or breathes there a serf who would mutter 

A thought 'gainst the "men at the helm"? 
If he's English, his faults they'll pass over 

With a sound word or two of advice ; 
But if Irish, he soon will discover 

The logic of Calcraft and Price ! 

Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven 

You're subjects of Britain's great throne, 
When, horror ! you might have been given 

A Kepublican birthright to own ! 
Thank God, that your blood is untainted. 

You're subjects of England — how nice ! — 
You've a chance of yet being acquainted 

With Calcraft or Governor Price ! 



272 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

ENTITLED TO A RAISE. 

SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION. 

THIS is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the 
force, 
To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude 

and coarse ; 
When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present 

his arms to him, 
And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official 

vim. 
And once when his contingent, in war's circumstance 

and pride, 
Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain 

side, 
His blood was cool — (discipline's rule) — he made no 

moan, so he 
Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree. 

This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace, 

But with a soul that's panting for a much superior 
place. 

He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intel- 
lect, 

And looks for that promotion which a genius should 
expect. 

He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the 
bar, 

He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the 
door was not ajar ; 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 273 

He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious 

childhood's glee, 
So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree ? 

And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady's man, you know ; 
With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a 

gallant show ; 
Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never 

dreamt, 
But he can stop a meeting or he'll fall in the attempt. 
He can really waltz divinely ; he can powder, he can 

puff. 
And he'd quite an ear for music till 'twas spoiled by 

"Harvey Duff"; 
He is silly, he is loyal, — he is all a Sub should be, 
With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree. 



THE POSTMAN S WOOING. 

THE postman's PLIGHT. 

JOHN THOMPSON was a postman who 
Was bound in Cupid's fetters, 
And though not deeply read, 'tis true, 
Was still a Man of Letters. 

He paid attention to one Kate 

Maria Julia Jervis, 
But she did not appreciate 

John Thompson's Civil Service. 



274 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Quoth he, "Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate, 

Nor let my love-suit fail, 
Oh tell me not my pleading's late, 

And don't Despatch this Mail." 

But she replied, in accents grave, 
" I love you not — decamp ! " 

And when he spoke again — she gave 
Her foot an Extra Stamp. 

And cried, "My anger you awake. 
Your speech on insult borders, 

I'm poor, but I would scorn to take 
Your vile Post-office Orders." 

Then Thompson felt in mournful mood. 
And moaned in accents shivery, 

"Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude, 
Pray pardon its Delivery." 

He left the room with footsteps slow, 

A bitter lesson taught. 
And then to counteract the blow, 

A pillar-box he sought. 

He felt how foolish was the tact 
In courtship he had boasted. 

And recognized the solemn fact 
That he was badly Posted. 



AN tRlSH CRAZY-QUILT. 275 



SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER. 

THE cobbler's always cheerful, though 
His path of life be crost, 
He does not tear his hair in woe, 
Whene'er his all is lost. 

He welts a lot, but not the wife 

With whom his lot is cast ; 
She'll find him, whatsoe'er their strife, 

Still faithful to the last. 

Onward his motto, aye, he strives 

To grasp some other feat. 
And in the dullest times contrives 

Somehow to make ends meet. 

The world may smite him without cause, 

He never shuns its whacks. 
And seldom grumbles at the laws 

That regulate his tax. 

We know but little of the good 

His many acts reveal — 
Were he 'midst madmen, why, he would 

Their understandings heal. 

And a much higher motive yet 

His generous heart controls, 
You would not see that saint forget 

Their perishable souls. 



276 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILf. 



A COMMERCIAL CRISIS. 

THE financial flare-up is going round. It has 
penetrated the modest shanty of Jones, in our 
street. 

"It was late when you came home last night, my 
dear," said Mrs. J. at breakfast yesterday morning. 
When that lady addresses her husband with the aflSx of 
" my dear," Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of 
the domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experi- 
ences of the way Mrs. Jones works up a tea-table tor- 
nado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn't 
say less ; he was afraid to say more. 

"I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned 
home last night." 

Jones admitted there was nothing particularly pre- 
mature about the hour in question. 

"Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn't find your feelings 
much hurt if I wished to know where you spent your 
evening." 

"Well, you see, love," began the marital martyr, 
"there's a sort of a kind of a description of — you 
don't understand these things, Maria, but we're plunged 
into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I thought — 
.that is, we thought — a few of us thought, you know — 
a whole lot of us thought that we'd have a consultation, 
you understand — to — to avert anything in the shape 
of a pecuniary panic about these diggings." 

" Oh, you consulted, then ? " 

" Yes ; we deliberated. W^e put our heads together, 
as it were, and we decided on a whole lot of things." 



AN IRISH CKAZY-QUILT. 277 

"What time did you decide on breaking up?" 

" Well, we had very important matters to discuss. 
You know the Jewish financiers — Baron Rothschild, 
and — and the rest of the Rothschilds, and the chief 
rabbis — and — and — and — all of them synagogue 
fellows, they've been working the oracle — and they've 
had a slap at the Barings." Here Jones gasped for 
breath. He felt that somehow he wasn't explaining 
matters as lucidly as was necessary. 

"I think," interposed Mrs. Jones, "that you'll have 
a slap at the almshouse before you die, at the rate — the 
poor rate — you're going on. What else ?" 

"Well," desperately; "Maria, I must say that 
women can't grasp the monetary situation. Don't you 
understand that there's been a withdrawal of gold from 
the Bank of England, and they've raised their rate to 
six per cent., and there's been a heap of failures, and, 
in fact, things have gone so ftir that, that — " 

"That you were so far gone when you came back 
last night that you took your boots off at the door-step, 
and tried to go to sleep on the scraper. And when 
you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that 
you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over 
the coals about the atrocities on the Jews. You showed 
me the minutes of the proceedings. They were in 
your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled * Duffy's 
Malt.' Then you said there was a European war just 
hatching in the Herzegovina. You wanted to demon- 
strate the position of the Austrians and the Russians 
out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand 
basin, the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat 



278 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

down in the coal scuttle, and you stood on your head 
in the wash basin, and I'm sure you swallowed some of 
the irons, for I can't find the tongs anywhere. Then 
you tried to make a speech to the milkman out of the 
bedroom window this morning ; and now it's all a com- 
mercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your coat 
this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! 
A woman's hairpin, you antiquated sinner ! And there 
were two or three hairs round it, red hairs, you 
crooked-eyed deceiver ! I have stood treachery, Mr. 
Jones, I have put up with your tantrums and your go- 
ings out and comings in for five years, Mr. Jones, but 
I can't, I won't, I shan't be bamboozled any longer 
with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your 
red- headed commercial crisis, the hussy." At this 
stage Mr. Jones eff'ected a remarkably rapid retreat, 
but he has been heard to observe since that it is really 
astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can 
have in a quiet kitchen in South Boston. 



AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS. 

HEIGHO for the morning, murky and dark, 
When, heedless of threatening cloud, 
I ventured to visit the green College park. 

And minoled alono^ with the crowd. 
I am almost now on insanity's brink, 

And this I attribute to 
Either a fairy attired in pink 

Or an ani>el whose robe was blue, 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 279 

The world considered my heart was flint, 

And futile were womanly wiles — 
Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint, 

Glances and glittering smiles. 
I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link. 

My journey of life to go through. 
But in those days I hadn't met beauty in pink. 

To say nothing of beauty in blue. 

I've had thirty odd years of a bachelor's life, 

Bachelor's buttons and fare ; 
And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife 

That Benedicts weepiugly share. 
But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink 

To join the Hymeneal crew. 
If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink 

Or a lovely commander in blue. 

I didn't go, like the mob, to the place 

For frivolous chatter and talk : 
I was interested in every race, 

Jump and hurdle and walk ; 
Yet when all was over I'm hanged but I think — 

Of course it can hardly be true — 
That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink, 

And the mile by a stayer in blue. 

It's over now, and I feel quite wise, 

For I mean in futurity's days 
When I go to races to cover my eyes 

With glasses to temper my gaze, 



280 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink 

Of Cupid's ambrosial dew, 
Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink 

Or equally dangerous blue. 



A MUSICAL REVENGE. 

I'M sick of music. I'm surfeited with music. I'm 
engulphed in an ocean of music. I'm buried 
beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is 
oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with 
music. I go to sleep to the tootle of the flute next 
door ; my slumbers are oppressed with the nightmare 
of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way, 
and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some 
fallen angel with forty-horse-power wrists tortures in 
the semi-detached gentlemanly residence at the back. 
In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly utter in 
the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild 
enough to undermine and blow it to splinters. The 
sound of the explosion would be a welcome change. 

But I have had revenge. Ha ! ha ! It was temporary, 
but bliss is brief. For six weeks the pianist behind my 
bedroom has been ringing the withers of my soul matu- 
tinally with selections from Wagner. For two months 
the trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals 
asunder by his frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones 
from his instrument. For a fortnight the flutist next 
door hfiS congealed my blood with variations on the 
"Carnival of Venice." They have had one night from 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 281 

me. They won't want another this side the Day of 
Judgment. 

I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my 
brother who plays the melodeon. I called to my assist- 
ance my friend who lets the tempest of his heart loose 
into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my 
cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I 
invoked the tremendous services of an Aberdeen 
acquaintance, who has been practising for ten years on 
the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed 
successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary preju- 
dices, and secured the presence of a fife and drum 
— principally drum — band from a Grand Army 
post. 

The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By 
the end of that time all the boarders in the street had 
given their landladies notice to quit, and I had received 
tliree deputations from the outraged inhabitants of the 
disturbed district. 

But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I 
had generously plied the perspiring performers with 
copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt, till they 
felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity 
or instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate 
on the suffering locality. Then I marshalled them out 
in the backyard, and implored them, as a last personal 
favor, to make themselves at home, and let each artist 
give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They 
vented. The bagpipes squealed out the "Reel of Tul- 
lochgorum," till it seemed as if all the pigs in the States 
had joined in shrill lament over Armour's interference 



282 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth " Killar- 
ney " with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. 
The double-bass growled like a thunder-storm in its last 
agonies an operatic overture that I had never heard 
before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The 
melodeon struggled manfully with "Nancy Lee," and 
the fife and drum band wrestled desperately with 
"Patrick's Day," except half a dozen or so of its mem- 
bers, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a 
choice assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expres- 
sions to the glories of the occasion. 

It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fire- 
engines and a division of police in the street ; in half 
an hour there were several attempts at suicide of leading 
residents of the locality ; and before our "grand finale" 
was finally done with there wasn't a juvenile or adult 
within half a mile that didn't feel he or she had had 
music enough to last a lifetime. 

If I am disturbed any more by the operators round 
me, I shall give them another dose of my orchestra. I 
will. I have sworn it. 



A LIAR LAID OUT. 



WE have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap- 
boiler in our street, who certainly should have 
been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give weight to 
Baron Munchausen, Jules Yerne, M. de Chaillu, or the 
London Ti7nes in the matter of exaggeration, and romp 
m an easy winner. The whoppers that spreader of lies 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 283 

and light can tell would raise the hair on the head of 
an Egyptian mummy. 

But he met his match last week. 

I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when 
there entered an acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who 
aspires to legislative honors. Of course Congressional 
candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing and 
eml)roidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. 
Well, my friend has been studying this science, and he 
has advanced so far that he can dispense with facts 
altogether now. His enemies aver that the truth isn't 
in him. I wouldn't say that myself. I think it is in 
him — very much in him — it's impossible to get it 
out of him. 

I didn't think of this, or I wouldn't have introduced 
him to Dipps. I regretted it on the spot. Dipps was 
smoking a peculiar pipe. The future member noticed 
it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was 
all there. He replied on the instant that that was the 
identical pipe that Napoleon HI. was smoking when he 
surrendered at Sedan. He had procured it from a 
wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up 
when the Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his 
German conqueror. 

The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely 
observed that by a strange coincidence he possessed 
the stump of the cigar which had fallen from Marshal 
MacMahon's lips when his eleventh horse was shot 
under him at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir 
from a Zouave with two wooden legs and a glass eye, 
who had secured the half-finished weed and was smoking 



284 AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple 
of teeth into the back of his head, from which they 
were extracted by the regimental surgeon. He had 
one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own gums. He 
showed it to Dipps. 

I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed 
the subject. He exhibited his w^al king-stick. Remark- 
able stick, that. It was manufactured out of one of the 
railway carriages blown into the river on the night of 
the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the 
risk of his life, a diver had brought up a panel out of 
that carriage for the express purpose of making that 
stick. 

The embryo representative had another coincidence 
on hand. He had another walking-stick at home — 
made out of the thigh bone of the engine-driver of that 
ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to carry 
about with him ; but he could show it to Dipps at any 
time, and would point out the half-cooked appearance 
of a portion of it, arising from the fact that the driver 
was in the habit of sitting on the boiler in cold weather 
to warm himself. 

Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he 
wasn't going to be put down without a desperate effort. 
He drew out his large scarf-pin. He called our atten- 
tion to what appeared to be a drop of water in the 
centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not 
real. It was not a diamond. It was far more precious. 
That small dewy globule inside was worth a hundred 
diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mys- 
tic shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 285 

had passed into Dipps's hands by a mh-acle. It was the 
tear Livingstone had shed when he first met Stanley. 
And Dipps smiled a lofty siiiile at the coming Daniel 
Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver's 
grin could say anything, " Trot out your curiosities, 
now, old man, and match that if you're able." 

Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the 
legislators didn't squelch Dipps with a third coinci- 
dence. It was extraordinary — it was almost fabulous, 
he said, but he had another breastpin which contained 
a companion tear to Dipps's. The knight of the soap- 
pan flatly denied the assertion. Livingstone had only 
shed one tear ; that tear hadn't been divided into suita- 
ble lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated, 
and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor. 

"I didn't say," gently interposed the coming victim 
of some future Tom Keed, " I didn't say that I had the 
tear Livingstone shed when the advent of the New York 
Herald Central African tourist pumped that saline par- 
ticle up. No, sir ; but I have a lachrymose relic 
equally enthralling in the interest which it must in- 
spire." 

"Pooh ! " snorted Dipps contemptuously, " what have 
you, what can you have, that approaches within a hem- 
isphere of my historic, geographic treasure? " 

"My friend," replied the next man to be counted in 
his absence by the Speaker, " I do not grudge you the 
tear that Livingston shed when he embraced Stanley, 
for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley 
didn't shed on that occasion, nor since, that I'm aware 
of." 



286 



AN IRISH CRAZr- QUILT, 



MULROONEY.-A TROOPER'S TALE. 

WE were stanch and brave a company as ever sad- 
dled steeds ; 
When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were 

deeds ; 
When Mosby's horse we fell across, the heads that met 

our blades 
Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids. 
We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance 
hung; 

Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper 

clung — 
For word passed round from camp to camp : The man 

for whom we'd die, 
The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy ! 

Mulrooney was our squadron's pride ; its star, its guid- 
ing lance ; 

The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance ; 

His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding 
swamp ; 
rHis merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in 
the camp. 

So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mul- 
rooney out. 

Each trooper's face with wrath aflame bespoke rebel- 
lious doubt ; 

Till our captain came and "soothered" us, and said, 
" We'll have to try 

To clear our troop's bad record that it ever held a spy." 



AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 287 

Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of 
jet. 

His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epau- 
lette ; 

The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger's 
reins, 

The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly 
through his veins ; 

His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or com- 
mand — 

A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band ; 

But gem and metal never fused, and that's the reason 
why 

Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the 
roughspun "spy." 

The morn Mulrooney went away, our " pretty " captain 

led 
Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, 

he said ; 
But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame 

ahead, 
A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead ! 
Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate 

despair — 
One sabre 'gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or 

rear. 
Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied 

cry : 
" By God ! the cur has sold us out ! Mulrooney was no 

spy ! " 



288 AK IRISH CRAZY-QUILT. 

But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were 

melting fast, 
There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar 

blast ; 
The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears 

anew, 
As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of 

blue ! 
One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering 

trees, 
A keen-eyed marksman's bullet brought the coward to 

his knees. 
And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive 

by. 

A shout went up from every throat, "Mulrooney's got 
the spy ! " 

Mulrooney had been hard and fast upon the captain's 

trail. 
The traitor thought to euchre Pat by placing him in jail, 
And, ere the blundering Kerry tongue could tell how 

matters stood, 
Give up his comrades to the wolves that thirsted for 

their blood. 
The captain played his cards with skill — his triumph 

almost came ; 
But Irish hearts are always trumps in war's uncertain 

game ; 
And pinioned in his tent that night he heard gay voices 

nigh 
Tell o'er and o'er the story of Mulrooney and the spy. 



